Law officials protected amid gang death fears

State prosecutors in Texas are being given 24-hour protection following two deadly attacks on colleagues possibly linked to white supremacist criminal gangs.

On Saturday Kaufman Country district attorney Mike McLelland and his wife Cynthia were found shot dead in their house.

Mr McLelland, in an interview shortly after the murder of Colorado’s prison chief Tom Clemments last month, said it was possible he had been gunned down by a white supremacist gang.

Mr McLelland said his office had prosecuted several cases against racist gangs, who have a strong presence around Kaufman County, a mostly rural area with a population of about 104,000.

“We put some real dents in the Aryan Brotherhood around here in the past year,” he said.

Mr McLelland said he carried a gun everywhere around town, a commuter community for the Dallas area. He thought assassins were more likely to try to attack him outside. He said he had warned all his employees to be constantly on the alert.

“The people in my line of work are going to have to get better at it,” he said of dealing with the danger, “because they’re going to need it more in the future.”

The number of attacks on prosecutors, judges and senior law enforcement officers in the US has risen in the past three years.