New Details Emerge in Mass Shooting that Injured 9 People

HOUSTON, TX — New details have emerged in the mass shooting in West University last month that injured nine people.

The officers who fired their weapons during a 30-minute stand-off on Sept. 26, came from three different police departments. Those officers were from Houston Police, Bellaire Police and West University Place Police.

The shooter, identified as 46-year-old lawyer Nathan Desai, used the cover of darkness and a tree when he began firing on police almost as soon as they arrived on scene about 6:30 a.m. at 4000 Law St.

"The officers, taking tactical positions and engaging the suspect, were able to prevent him from leaving his position and doing more harm or from retrieving a rifle and hundreds of rounds of ammunition in his vehicle parked nearby,” according to a Houston Police Department statement.

The nine police officers who engaged Desai, are Houston Police Officers Sgt. G. Batcheler, senior police Officer B. Schmidt, Officer F. Kraidieh, Officer R. Flakes and Officer M. Muskiet; Bellaire Police officers Lt. J. Cotton, Lt. R. Brown and Officer A. Proctor; and West University Place Police officer Sgt. A. Gomez.

DeSai was found dead shortly after the incident, and was surrounded by nearly 75 shell casings, police said.

No officers were injured.

Desai was wearing a vintage World War II German officer’s uniform when he began shooting at motorists at 6:30 a.m.

"What extent that played I don't know because there's also other historic, or what I would call vintage, military stuff in the apartment going back to the Civil War," HPD Capt. Dwayne Ready said.

Police said Desai was heavily armed with about 2,500 rounds of ammunition, a .45 semi-automatic handgun and a .45 semi-automatic Thompson carbine.

Interim Houston Police Chief Martha Montalvo said Desai’s car was also found on Law Street, and that at least one weapon was found inside.

Police spent hours searching the vehicle and also searched his apartment nearby where they found several other weapons as well as ammunition and body armor, police said.

Nearly a month since the shooting, police investigators said they still don’t have a known motive.

Desai didn’t appear to have any ties to terrorism and didn’t suffer from any mental health issues, according to investigators.

Six people were initially hospitalized because of the shooting.

One person was critically injured, while three others were treated at the scene and released.

Meanwhile, police investigators were back at Desai’s apartment complex on Tuesday evening after residents reported finding bullets lodged in the building's fence and in some units.

One bullet pierced Deborah Boily's condo.

Boiyl, who’d been Desai’s neighbor for 14 years, told KPRC that he was a nice man and she would speak with him periodically when their paths would cross.

Boiyl told KPRC that she’d been on vacation this summer and noticed she wasn’t seeing Desai as often.

"He had been isolating himself a lot that's a very big sign of people with crippling depression," she said. "I don't want him painted as a demon because I don't in my heart believe he was. I think he became very ill.”

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