Texas Governor Vows to ‘Hunt Down’ Prosecutors’ Killers
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Alex Wong/Getty Images(KAUFMAN COUNTY, Texas) — Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Thursday vowed to hunt down and punish those responsible for killing two Dallas-area prosecutors, and doubled a reward to $200,000 for information that leads to a conviction.
There have been no arrests and few concrete leads in the shooting deaths of Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, who were killed last weekend in their home, or in the death of the county’s assistant district attorney Mark Hasse, gunned down in January.
He told the perpetrators of the killings that they were on “notice.” “We’re going to hunt you down. We’re going to punish you,” Perry said. “We will not let this cower us. Texas is a law-and-order state and we will track down and punish those who have committed this crime.”
The governor would not speculate on who might be responsible, saying it was “premature” to single out any group or individual. Investigators have said, however, they are focusing on links to Mexican drug cartels and a white supremacist prison gang known as the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas.
Perry added an additional $100,000 of state funds for a reward leading to the arrest and conviction of the killers. Kaufman County had already offered its own $100,000 reward.
“At this time we’re looking at everything available, every single avenue. We’re not leaving any stone unturned,” said Dallas FBI Special Agent in Charge Diego Rodriguez.
As state and local officials gathers for the McLellands’ memorial Thursday, the county’s new acting district attorney Brandi Fernandez vowed to continue McLelland and Hasse’s work and continue to prosecute crimes in the county.
On Monday, following McLelland’s death all of the employees in the prosecutor’s office, “every single person showed up” to work and the deaths have not stopped the administration of justice in the county, she said.
Each prosecutor, she said, “takes an oath to serve community….We were unnerved a little bit….[But] every prosecutor agreed to uphold that oath.”
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