The man who sped through an Austin crowd on Wednesday night, killing two people and injuring 23 more, has been identified as 21-year-old Rashad Charjuan Owens, a father of six young children who was scheduled to perform in half an hour. Owens, a rapper and producer going by KillingAllBeatz or K.A.B254, was due on stage at 1 a.m. for a South by Southwest performance at a nearby club, but had been drinking before he fled a traffic stop and crashed through a barricade on a crowded street, his brother told the Austin American-Statesman.
As the annual music, film, and technology conference got going, Owens was looking for collaborators:
At 19, Owens pleaded guilty in Alaska, where he also has an active warrant, to driving under the influence. Now he faces two counts of capital murder. “I can’t grasp it. I can’t believe it,” said Owens’s brother. “Everything was going good. We were just there trying to perform, and it made a whole other turn.”
