Three die in Texas shooting

COLLEGE STATION, Texas — A Texas law enforcement officer attacked as he brought an eviction notice to a house was among three people, including a shooter inside the home, killed Monday near the Texas A&M University campus.

A 65-year-old man was the third person killed in the shootings at an off-campus home not far from the university's football stadium, College Station Assistant Police Chief Scott McCollum said. Three other law enforcement officers and a 55-year-old woman were wounded, he said.

Brazos County Constable Brian Bachmann had gone to the home with an eviction notice just after 12 p.m., McCollum said. A man in his mid-30s who lived there opened fire from inside, he said.

Officers responding to reports of an officer down saw Bachmann wounded on the ground in the front yard, then got into what McCollum described as an extended shootout with the gunman, who eventually was shot.

Both Bachmann and the gunman were later pronounced dead at a hospital. Officials did not say where the 65-year-old was shot or why he, or the woman who was wounded, was at the home.

The woman had surgery Monday afternoon, and one of the injured officers was being treated for a gunshot wound in the calf and was in stable condition, McCollum said. Two other officers sustained non-life-threatening injuries not from gunfire, but McCollum would not say how they were hurt.

The shootings prompted Texas A&M to issue an emergency alert warning students and residents to stay away from the area. Most of the university's 50,000 students were not on the campus about 90 miles northwest of Houston because the fall semester doesn't start until Aug. 27, university spokeswoman Sherylon Carroll said.

Diana Harbourt, 27, who lives about a block from where the shootings happened, said she heard five loud popping sounds from a back room of her home looking out her front door to see an officer park his vehicle on the street and crouch in front of another vehicle.

"We heard him exchanging some words with the person and then shots being fired," Harbourt said. "And then we heard more sirens and more officers and fire trucks came and they were keeping their distance, kind of slowly moving in. More officers showed up and told us to stay inside."

Officers, meanwhile, were dealing with losing someone McCollum called a respected colleague.

"Brian Bachmann was very close to everyone in law enforcement," McCollum said. "He was a pillar in this community, and it's sad and tragic that we've lost him today."

Bachmann worked more than 19 years in law enforcement, according to the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education. He started out with the Hempstead Police Department before spending most of his career with the Brazos County Sheriff's Office. He had been a constable since January 2011 after winning election to the post the prior November.

In a February 2010 candidate profile in the Bryan-College Station Eagle, the married father of two said he wanted to bring "constables back to the community" by actively patrolling neighborhoods to discourage crime.

Constables are law enforcement officers similar to sheriff's deputies who are elected to serve in specific county precincts. They primarily serve warrants and official paperwork or act as courtroom bailiffs.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, an A&M alumnus, said at an event in Florida that his "prayers are with any of those that have been injured." A&M President R. Bowen Loftin issued a statement calling Monday a "sad day in the Bryan-College Station community."