Authorities tell CBS News that the shooter behind the deadly massacre at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin Sunday has been identified as 40-year-old Wade Michael Page.
Page previously served in the U.S. military, but was no longer on active duty, sources tell CBS News.
CBS News reports that Page enlisted in the Army in April 1992 and was given a less-than-honorable discharge in October 1998. He was last stationed in Fort Bragg, N.C., serving in the psychological operations unit.
Authorities said Page strode into the temple carrying a 9mm handgun and multiple magazines of ammunition and opened fire without saying a word.
When the shooting at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in suburban Milwaukee ended, six victims ranging in age from 39 to 84 years old lay dead. Three others were critically wounded. The suspect was shot and killed by police.
Page was described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “frustrated neo-Nazi” who was active in the obscure underworld of white supremacist music.
Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the nonprofit civil rights organization in Montgomery, Ala., said Page had been on the white-power music scene for more than a decade, playing in bands known as Definite Hate and End Apathy.
“The name of the band seems to reflect what he went out and actually did,” said Potok. The music often includes lyrics that discuss genocide against Jews and other minorities.
In a 2010 interview, Page told a white supremacist website that he became active in white-power music in 2000, when he left his native Colorado and started the band End Apathy in 2005.
He told the website his “inspiration was based on frustration that we have the potential to accomplish so much more as individuals and a society in whole,” according to the law center. He did not mention violence.
Page was demoted in June 1998 for getting drunk while on duty and going AWOL, two defense officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release information about the gunman.
The FBI was leading the investigation because the shooting was considered domestic terrorism, or an attack that originated inside the U.S.
On Sunday, the first officer to respond was shot eight to nine times as the officer tended to a victim outside. A second officer then exchanged gunfire with the suspect, who was fatally shot.
The wounded officer was in critical condition Monday, along with two other people who were wounded.
