DENVER — A Colorado parolee who was captured after a gun battle and chase with Texas law enforcement officers on Thursday, and who was suspected of being tied to the killing of the head of Colorado's prison system, has died, officials said Friday.
Sheriff David Walker of Wise County, Tex., said the authorities had identified the suspect as Evan Spencer Ebel, 28. Court records in Colorado show that Mr. Ebel had a criminal history dating to 2003, including convictions for robbery, weapons charges and assault. He was on parole in the Denver area.
Sheriff Walker said Texas officials planned to speak with Colorado investigators about Mr. Ebel's possible involvement with a white supremacist prison gang.
Mr. Ebel died in a Fort Worth hospital from gunshot wounds to the head, officials said.
He was pulled over about 65 miles northwest of Dallas at 11 a.m. Thursday. He was driving a black Cadillac with Colorado license plates that matched the description of a car that had been spotted near the Monument, Colo., home of Tom Clements, executive director of Colorado's Department of Corrections, shortly before he was shot to death while answering his front door around 8:40 p.m. on Tuesday.
Law enforcement officials said the man in the Cadillac opened fire on a sheriff's deputy from Montague County, Tex., and then sped off, heading south at 100 miles per hour. When police and sheriff's officers from nearby Wise County tried to stop him, he fired out of the car's window, striking at least two cruisers.
He then crashed into an 18-wheel tractor-trailer, which crumpled the Cadillac like a tin can. The man jumped out of the car armed with a handgun and fired at officers until he was shot, officials said.
"He didn't look like he wanted to be caught or taken alive," Police Chief Rex Hoskins of Decatur, Tex., the Wise County seat, said at a news conference.
The authorities in Texas said the man could be connected with Mr. Clements's death and a number of other killings in Colorado. They did not provide any other details.
