Police: Austin Shooting Leaves 3 Dead, Suspect Identified As Former Detective

After an overnight manhunt, police on Monday apprehended a man suspected of fatally shooting three people near a shopping plaza in northern Austin a day earlier.

Stephen Broderick, 41, was arrested near Manor, Texas, about 15 miles east of where the shooting occurred shortly before noon on Sunday, local media reported. A citizen reportedly spotted him walking on the street and called 911. Broderick was reportedly arrested without incident.

Interim Austin Police Chief Joseph Chacon identified Broderick, a former detective with the Travis County Sheriff’s Office, as the suspect during a news conference Sunday. Broderick was described as a Black male last seen wearing a gray hoodie, sunglasses and a baseball cap.

The victims were two Hispanic women and one Black male, Chacon said. A child who was “involved” in the incident has been located and is safe.

The Elgin School District identified two of the victims as Alyssa Broderick and Willie Simmons III. Alyssa Broderick was a student in the district until she withdrew in October 2020, according to a statement from the school district. Simmons was a senior at Elgin High School, located about 25 miles east of the shooting site, the statement said. 

Their relationship to the suspect was not immediately clear. 

Chacon said Sunday that the shooting was not a random attack, but an isolated incident in which Broderick targeted people he knew. As the fugitive search unfolded, Chacon warned that Broderick was “armed and dangerous” and encouraged people to call 911 if they saw anything suspicious.

“We are concerned that he might possibly take a hostage and be himself sheltered somewhere waiting for us to leave,” Chacon said. “We don’t know if he’s in a vehicle or if he’s on foot.”

Broderick resigned from the sheriff’s office last year after he was arrested and charged in June 2020 with sexual assault of a child and family violence.

Austin-Travis County EMS responded Sunday to a 911 report of shots fired at 11:42 a.m. local time, officials said. First responders located the victims, who were pronounced dead at the scene.

The shooting took place outside, near an apartment complex close to The Arboretum shopping plaza.

Police issued a shelter-in-place order for the area soon after the first report of gunshots. The order was lifted several hours later as the search for Broderick continued into the night.

Earlier Sunday, police tweeted that the shooting was a “domestic situation” that likely posed no risk to the general public.

Photos showed a heavy police presence at the scene. Journalists reported helicopters circling overhead as law enforcement officials combed the area.

The shooting is one of several in recent days that has resulted in multiple deaths.

Earlier Sunday, at least three people were killed and two others seriously injured in a shooting at a bar near Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Eight people were killed Thursday at a FedEx warehouse in Indianapolis when a former employee opened fire inside the building.

Last month, eight people, including six women of Asian descent, were shot to death at three Atlanta spas. Less than a week later, a gunman fatally shot 10 people inside a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado.