Texas Shootout Suspect Identified as White Supremacist With 'Evil Evan' Tattoo

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The man involved in a high speed car chase and shootout in Texas, who police are eyeing for the murder of Colorado's prisons chief and a pizza deliveryman earlier in the week, is a paroled Colorado inmate and white supremacist gang member with the word "hopeless" tattooed on his body, sources tell ABC News.

Evan Spencer Ebel, 28, has been tentatively identified as the shooter who opened fired at police in Texas when they pulled him over during a routine traffic stop Thursday, sources told ABC News. He is believed to have shot one deputy three times and then started a 100 mph car chase across two Texas counties while continuing to shoot at police.

The chase ended when the driver was hit by an 18-wheel truck. The suspect emerged from the wreck and kept shooting at cops until he was cut down by return fire, according to Wise County Sheriff David Walker.

The suspect was flown to a hospital in Fort Worth, where he is awaiting organ harvesting, though police said he was "legally deceased" after the shootout.

Ebel has been in and out of jail the last 10 years, and was a part of the white supremacist prison gang 211 Crew, sources said.

Ebel, friends told ABC News, had the words "hopeless" and "Evil Evan" tattooed on his body.

Police are checking fingerprints and examining the weapons found to determine whether he also killed Colorado prison executive Tom Clements on Tuesday.

Clements, 58, was shot and killed at his home. Neighbors told police they saw a black, "box style" car in the neighborhood at the time of the murder.

The driver involved in the Texas shootout on Thursday was driving a black Cadillac with Colorado license plates matching the "box style" description.

Police are also investigating whether Ebel was involved in the murder of a pizza delivery man in Denver on Sunday. Texas authorities said evidence found today in the suspect's car -- including a Domino's pizza uniform jacket and a cardboard pizza box -- may link him to the unsolved murder of Nathan Leon, 27, who was killed delivering pizza near Golden, Colo.

Police are trying to determine whether Ebel committed all three crimes.

"Do we suspect it is related [to the Colorado killing]? It may be," Sheriff Walker said Thursday. "I believe the description of the car in Colorado is a box style black car" that was identified as possibly being a Lincoln. "This is box style car with Colorado plates."

Police in Wise County, Texas, have scheduled a press conference for later today.

Friends of Ebel, who grew up in Weat Ridge, Colo., told ABC News that he had been depressed and on edge for years. He had been in prison on an assortment of assault, robbery, and "menacing" charges dating back to 2005, according to jail records.

"He was depressed a lot," Ryan Arici, a friend of Ebel's from Weat Ridge, told ABC News. "And he was a dark person. His walls were painted black and his windows were blacked out."

Ebel dropped out of school, where he had been in a special education program for "severely impacted" students, and friends said he "lost it" when his sister, Marin Ebel, was killed in a car crash as a teenager in 2004. The death set off a string of criminal behaviors and jail stints for Ebel.

"Everyone was always afraid of Evan. Even the hardest kids were afraid of Evan," one friend told ABC.

Ricky Alengi, another friend from Weat Ridge, said that Ebel had been doing better upon his latest release from prison. Alengi said he was shocked to find out about the shootout in Texas.

"I thought he was getting better," Ricky Alengi said. "He was writing books in prison. His mom and I were going to see him soon."

His father, attorney Jack Ebel, once testified on his behalf in front of the Colorado legislature about prison conditions for mentally ill inmates. He did not immediately return calls for comment.

His mother, Jody Mangue, now lives in Costa Rica, was distraught over the news of her son, friends said.
 
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