Fort Worth, Texas – A college student was randomly gunned down outside a bar in Texas by a shooter who allegedly told police he would have killed others — if he hadn’t run out of bullets.
Wes Smith, a junior at Texas Christian University, was standing on the sidewalk near the bar Your Mom’s House in Fort Worth’s West 7th District shortly after 1 a.m. Friday when Matthew Purdy approached him, cops said in an arrest warrant affidavit obtained by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Purdy, 21, briefly chatted with Smith, also 21 — before shooting the former football player, police said.
Purdy then fled.
Smith was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead around 1:45 a.m.
Smith wasn’t the only one Purdy allegedly assaulted, with two people telling cops after the shooting that the gunman had charged at them and hit one of them in the back of the head, according to the affidavit.
The New York Post reported that police later found Purdy in a nearby parking lot and put him in the back of a patrol car after patting him down.
One of the officers, however, eventually noticed Purdy in the back of the vehicle holding the handle of a pistol, according to the affidavit.
Purdy, who did not know Smith, admitted to police he shot the victim three times: in the stomach, the shoulder, and, once he was on the ground, in the back of the head “because he wanted to make sure he was dead,” authorities said.
The shooter told police he didn’t have a “clear reason” for killing Smith and only opened fire after asking the victim whether he knew his father, who had been assaulted in the area, according to the affidavit.
He would’ve also shot a bystander if he hadn’t already run out of ammunition, Purdy allegedly said.
Smith, originally from Germantown, Tenn., was a finance major and a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity at TCU, according to his LinkedIn profile.
During his freshman year, he was a free safety for the university’s Horned Frogs football team.
