Chicago, August 9: The man who opened fire in a Sikh temple in the United States, killing six people, apparently died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head rather than from police fire, the FBI said Wednesday.
Wade Michael Page, a singer with a neo-Nazi punk band, was initially said to have been killed by a police officer who stopped Sunday’s rampage in a suburban place of worship by shooting the assailant in the stomach.
But FBI Special Agent Teresa Carlson, the head of the agency’s Milwaukee office and leader of the investigation, said: “Subsequent to that wound, it appears that Page died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.”
Carlson told reporters that FBI investigators have not yet established a motive for the shootings in Oak Creek, Wisconsin and have not found any evidence that anyone else other than Page was involved in the crime.
She confirmed that Wade’s ex-girlfriend, Misty Cook, was arrested on Sunday at her home on a weapons charge but said this was unconnected to the broader domestic terrorism investigation into the temple shooting.
South Milwaukee Police and FBI agents were interviewing Cook after the earlier attack and noticed that she had a weapon despite being banned from owning a firearm because of a previous felony conviction, Carlson said.
A racist former soldier with links to white supremacists, Page seems to have drifted from job to job since leaving the army in 1998 and had become a singer in a so-called “white power” band.
The FBI, which did not have an active file on Page before the killings, has said he is the subject of a “domestic terrorism” probe and that his ties to white supremacist groups are being scrutinized.
