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DALLAS (AP) — Military officials investigating an apparent murder-suicide that happened Friday on a U.S. air base in Texas are trying to determine whether the gunman was authorized to have a weapon on the base, where the possession of firearms is heavily restricted.
The gunman was an airman who targeted his commander at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, according to a senior U.S. official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to publicly discuss the shooting. The commander oversaw a base K-9 unit, the official said.
A motive for the shooting and many other details were not released by authorities Friday. Brig. Gen. Robert LaBrutta, who oversees Joint Base San Antonio, declined to identify the men, saying their families must first be notified. He also stressed the shooting was not an act of terrorism.
Investigators from the Air Force and FBI are tracing two handguns found near the bodies of the two men inside a building that holds classrooms and offices.
Military-issued and personal firearms are heavily restricted on the base and it's not clear whether the gunman was authorized to have a weapon, according to Dan Hawkins, a spokesman for the base. Weapons are used for training purposes and carried by base security personnel, Hawkins said, but personal firearms cannot be freely carried on the base.
"Allowing everyone to carry personal firearms would make the job of our security professionals much more difficult," Hawkins said. He also said security officers must be notified if a personal weapon is being brought onto the installation and the firearm must be registered, in addition to other requirements.
The restrictions apply not only to Lackland but also to Fort Sam Houston, the Randolph air base and another installation that comprise Joint Base San Antonio, which has more than 80,000 full-time personnel and is the home of Air Force basic training.
The 2016 defense policy bill signed by President Barack Obama directed the Pentagon to set up a process by which commanders of U.S. military installations and certain other commanders at military reserve or recruiting centers can authorize a member of the armed forces to carry a firearm if "necessary as a personal- or force-protection measure."
But Hawkins said that congressional legislation did not alter firearms policies already in place at Joint Base San Antonio, and neither did theTexas Legislature's decision last year to allow for the open-carry of handguns in the state.
Friday's shooting, which the San Antonio Express-News reports caused officials to abruptly end a nearby military training parade with thousands of spectators, is the latest to occur at a military facility inTexas in the last several years.
In January 2015, an Army veteran and former clerk at the veterans' clinic at Fort Bliss in El Paso shot and killed a psychologist, then killed himself. About a year earlier, three soldiers were killed and 16 wounded in an attack at Fort Hood near Killeen by Army Spc. Ivan A. Lopez, who also killed himself.
And in the deadliest attack to occur at a U.S. military installation, 13 people were killed and 31 were wounded in a mass shooting in 2009 at Fort Hood. Nidal Hasan, a former U.S. Army major, was convicted and sentenced to death in that shooting.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A homeless 17-year-old has been arrested, and police said Friday he'll be charged with murder in the killing of a University of Texas dance major whose body was recovered in the heart of the bustling campus — unnerving one of the country's best-known schools.
Investigators said Meechaiel Criner wasn't a university student and wasn't believed to have been in Austin long. Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo said Criner could face additional charges in the slaying of 18-year-old Oregon-native Haruka Weiser.
"We are very certain that the subject we have in custody ... is responsible for the death of this beautiful young woman," Acevedo said at a campus news conference.
Weiser was last seen leaving the campus drama building Sunday night. Her body was found Tuesday in a creek near the alumni center and UT's iconic football stadium, an area that hums with activity day and night.
The slaying shook a campus that's home to about 50,000 students. University President Greg Fenves called Weiser's slaying "horrifying and incomprehensible" and described it as an attack on the entire school community.
"It was unsettling," said 20-year-old Jasmine Chavez, who was on UT's central mall area Friday but hails from Houston. "I feel better now that they've caught the guy."
Police released surveillance video that showed a man they said was a suspect walking a women's bicycle. Firefighters recognized the man on the video as Criner, whom they had spoken to in connection with a trash fire near the UT campus on Monday. An Austin resident who reported the fire also called police when she saw the surveillance video, Acevedo said.
Criner wasn't arrested for the fire but was instead taken to a shelter. Police found him there Thursday and took him into custody without incident. The arrest warrant said his clothing matched that of the man on the surveillance video and that he was in possession of a women's bike, as well as Weiser's duffel bag and some of her other belongings, including her laptop.
Acevedo wouldn't speculate on motive and said authorities are still working to determine Criner's criminal record.
Texas Department of Family Protective Services spokeswoman Julie Moody said Criner "had been in Child Protective Services care" but that she couldn't elaborate on where, for how long or provide any further details, citing privacy rules and the ongoing criminal investigation.
Police have not released many details on Criner's background, though a person with the same name and birthdate as the suspect is listed in driver's license records as having lived in Texarkana, about 350 miles northeast of Austin.
A 2014 article in a Texarkana high school publication featured a Meecchaiel Criner who described being bullied and difficulties in foster care as a child, saying, "What I want to leave behind is my name — I want them to know who Meechaiel Criner is."
Weiser's autopsy showed she had been assaulted, but police have refused to release further details about her death, except to say that the route she took from her dorm to the drama building often passed Waller Creek, where her body was found.
Fenves said increased police patrols on campus, which have includedTexas state troopers in cars, on bikes and on horseback, would continue for the time being. The Department of Public Safety also is conducting a security review on campus, including checking video monitoring, lighting and building security systems
"We will honor Haruka's life and what she stood for," Fenves said. "We will take this as an occasion to do as Haruka's parents asked us to do, learn from this and make this a better community and a safer community for everyone."
The university said that Weiser's was the first on-campus homicide since former Marine Charles Whitman climbed to the top of UT's bell tower on Aug. 1, 1966, and opened fire, killing 14 people and wounding scores of others. Authorities later determined Whitman also killed his wife and mother in the hours before he went to the tower. A 17th death would be attributed to Whitman in 2001 when a Fort Worth man died of injuries from the shooting.
Weiser's family said she had planned to take on a second, pre-med major soon and to travel to Japan this summer to see relatives. In a statement Friday, it said "we are relieved to hear" an arrest had been made.
"We remain steadfast in our desire to honor Haruka's memory through kindness and love," the family said "not violence."
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court handed Texas a victory Monday, upholding the state's system of drawing legislative voting districts based on everyone who lives there — not just registered voters.
But it was liberal groups, rather than the Republican-controlled state's top leaders, who applauded the 8-0 ruling loudest since it likely bolsters the voting power of Texas' booming Latino population over sparsely populated rural areas dominated by conservatives.
Gov. Greg Abbott's office declined to comment. Attorney General Ken Paxton put out a statement saying only that his office was pleased with the decision and "committed to defending the Constitution and ensuring the state legislature, representing the citizens, continues to have the freedom to ensure voting rights consistent with the Constitution."
Contrast that with the head of the Texas Democratic Party, which hailed the ruling as affirming the principle of "one person, one vote," a requirement laid out by the Supreme Court in 1964.
"This is a victory for our democracy and every Texas family," party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa said in a statement.
Added American Civil Liberties Union Legal Director Steven Shapiro: "The argument that states are forbidden from treating everyone equally for redistricting purposes never made any constitutional sense and was properly rejected."
That was a far cry from the years Texas Democrats and civil liberties and Hispanic advocacy groups have spent arguing in federal court that the Republican-controlled Legislature discriminates against minority voters in other ways it has drawn voting maps and in its approval of one of the nation's toughest voter ID laws.
They say that minority voters are more likely to support Democrats, but have been deliberately dispersed by many lawmaker-drawn electoral maps or are less likely to have one of seven forms of identification Texas now accepts at the polls.
Texas' top officials have long countered that the electoral maps are fair and that its voter ID law prevents election fraud.
At issue in this case were the complaints of two Texas voters, Sue Evenwel of Mount Pleasant and Edward Pfenninger from north of Houston, who argued that their voting power was diluted because many registered voters lived in their districts.
They compared that to Texans casting ballots in urban areas dominated by people who were too young to vote, or who aren't American citizens.
While arguing the case before the Supreme Court in December, both sides defended the notion of one person, one vote, but differed on how to apply it.
Paxton's office defended Texas' current system, which has been good to Republicans. A Democrat hasn't won statewide office in Texas since 1994 — the nation's longest such losing streak.
But it also suggested that a ruling overturning Texas' system would simply allow the state to determine another acceptable method.
The Supreme Court stopped short Monday of saying that states must use total population. It also didn't rule on whether states are free to use a different measure, as Texas had asked.