Yanling Padilla, a deputy commissioner at the bureau of investigation, told reporters the gun used to shoot the man was an airsoft pistol with the name M2.

An ATF spokesman told CNN that in general, the bureau considers most airsoft guns to be prohibited, because they don’t function the way real firearms do.

But a few devices that look as if they might fire real bullets may technically be deemed “accidentally fired firearms”, he said.

The officer’s name was not released. His body is being preserved under state law.

A woman who answered the phone at the station in San Antonio, the nearest major city to the scene where the shooting occurred, said the shooting remains under investigation.

“She said she did not want to say much and she didn’t want to answer the phone,” another police source said.

In the days since the shooting, there have been conflicting accounts about what led authorities to track down a gun. Authorities believe the man was killed in a dispute. But some have suggested the young officer may have shot him to avenge his father, who reportedly owed a debt to the suspect’s mother.

It was unclear from police accounts of the incident Tuesday night whether the suspect and officer were acquainted.

But the manhunt for his brother has brought attention to a string of recent shootings of children in which a child wielding a toy gun was caught.

‘I heard about the shooting’

The shooter has been named as Julio Montano Montes, 38, a Mexican citizen living in North Texas. He was born in Guadalajara, Mexico.

The San Antonio Police Department, which confirmed that it is investigating the shooting, said “Mr. Montes was known to the San Antonio Police Department during the years that the department was active in the area that he was killed in.”

In addition, the suspect was “known to the local sheriff’s office for traffic violations in the area that same year,” city spokeswoman Susan Goodyear told CNN.

Goodyear, adding that an autopsy has yet to be performed, said that investigators are looking for a handgun or possibly rifles.

SAPD officers are seen during a press conference Tuesday, April 26.

She described the victim in the shooting as a “typical middle and high school student.”

Witnesses said the shooting occurred on the 800 block of Hwy. 290 west of Alamo Square