Texas district attorney, wife found dead after prosecutor killed

DALLAS (Reuters) - A Texas district attorney and his wife were shot dead in the same county where an assistant prosecutor was gunned down outside a courthouse in January, the sheriff of Kaufman County, said on Sunday.

Security has been tightened for other officials after the shooting deaths of Kaufman County Criminal District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, Sheriff David Byrnes said.

Byrnes said it was not clear if there was a link between the shootings and the January slaying of Kaufman County Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse. Hasse was shot and killed as he walked from his car to the county courthouse.

"It's unnerving to the law enforcement community, it's unnerving to the community at large," Byrnes told a news conference. "And that's why we're striving to assure the community that we are still providing public safety and will be able to do that."

Byrne's office reported the shooting deaths late on Saturday. The Dallas Morning News, citing unnamed sources, said McLelland and his wife were found shot at their home.

The sheriff said there would be "increased security at the courthouse tomorrow, visible security." He declined to elaborate.

Numerous state and federal officials, including the FBI and the Texas Rangers, are involved in the investigation, Bryrne said. He added that it was too early to discuss whether there were any suspects.

McLelland, a 23-year U.S. Army veteran who served in Operation Desert Storm, had five children including a son who is an officer with the Dallas police department, according to a biography on the county website.

Authorities have made no arrests in Hasse's killing. McLelland had vowed to bring his killer to justice.

Hasse was shot to death the same day the U.S. Department of Justice released a statement saying the Kaufman County District Attorney's Office was involved in a racketeering case against the Aryan Brotherhood white supremacist group.

Earlier this month, the Hasse slaying case took a new turn when the Kaufman police chief said the FBI was looking for any link between Hasse's death and the March 19 shooting death of Colorado prisons chief Tom Clements.

Evan Spencer Ebel, 28, a Colorado prison parolee suspected of killing Clements, died in a shootout with police in Decatur, Texas, on March 21. Ebel was a member of a white supremacist prison gang called the 211 Crew and had a swastika tattoo, prison records indicate.

Kaufman County is east of the metropolitan Dallas-Fort Worth area.

(Reporting by Marice Richter in Dallas. additional reporting by Jon Nielsen in Waxahachie, Texas, and Corrie MacLaggan in Austin, Texas; writing by Tim Gaynor; editing by Alex Dobuzinskis and Jackie Frank)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/texas-county-district-attorney-wife-found-dead-032732367.html

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