Updated at 5:46 p.m.: WFAA is reporting that Ricky Don McCommas, the assault rifle-wielding man involved in a shootout at a parking lot outside of Granbury City Hall, had been charged with the alleged rape of his niece. He'd missed a court appearance Friday morning, and instead came to Granbury to confront her. An earlier press conference, by the way, mistakenly identifed McCommas as Richard Randall McComas.
Original Story: Hood County Sheriff's deputies responded to a disturbance call in the Oak Trail Shores subdivision on Lake Granbury at around 10:50 this morning. By some accounts, it was a criminal trespass call.
According to a Texas Highway Patrol spokesman, deputies encountered 60-year-old Ricky Don McCommas Richard Randall McComas, who opened fire on them at a house on Edgecliff Court. One deputy was struck in the head and remains in critical condition. McCommas fled.
The other deputy put out a description of his white Chevy van with shot-out windows, which was at that moment headed some nine miles southeast from the subdivision to downtown Granbury. When he arrived, police blocked Randall's van in the town square. He pulled into a parking lot at city hall and opened fire with what police Chief Mitch Galvan described as an "assault rifle-type weapon," according to Hood County News.
"Bullets were coming from all directions and I was wanting to look around and my daughter said, 'No, Mom, no! You're gonna get hit!'" a witness told HCN. "So we just watched it all. It was like Bonnie and Clyde. I've never seen nothing like it."
During the shootout, a police officer was struck in an "upper extremity. His injuries aren't considered life threatening. McCommas was hit and pronounced dead at the scene.
The name of the deputy who was struck in the head has not yet been released. The THP spokesman had no further details about the nature of the disturbance or the type of weapon McComas used. But NBC 5 has a photograph of what appears to be a modified assault rifle lying on the sidewalk. Judging by the ongoing cataloging of shell casings, more than three dozen rounds were fired.
This is just one more incident in a litany where civilians use military weapons, intended for combat and designed to inflict mass casualties, for that very end. Nobody knows why Richard McCommas steered straight for City Hall. One can only imagine his purpose. But it's incredible that no bystanders were killed in the fusillade his rifle unleashed.
