Austin gunman assaulted woman at Tesla facility in December, lawsuit alleges

The gunman who carried out the mass shooting last weekend in Austin, Texas, assaulted a woman three months earlier at a Tesla facility, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in Texas.

The suit claims Ndiaga Diagne, who shot and killed three people and wounded more than a dozen others while wearing a shirt with Iranian regime insignia on it, "violently and without provocation" attacked a 65-year-old Tesla employee in December, the lawsuit said.

The woman, Lilian Brady, never knew the identity of the man who attacked her until she recognized his face when she saw news of the shooting this week, her lawyer, Robert Hilliard, told CBS News. FBI investigators interviewed Brady this week, the lawyer, Robert Hilliard said. The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Diagne was shot and killed by police after he fired into a crowd on an Austin bar patio at around 1:30 a.m. Sunday, March 1. He used a handgun and had a AR-style rifle with him, and there was a Quran in the SUV he used during the attack, law enforcement sources told CBS News.

Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said Thursday that her department had never had any contact with Diagne before the shooting.

Diagne was praying on a walking path at the Tesla facility in Austin in December when he grabbed Brady and threw her to the ground, Hilliard said. The lawsuit alleges Diagne was also an employee of Tesla. 

The suit accuses Tesla of negligence for allowing an employee with "known aggressive tendencies" into a common area with other employees and asks for damages of over $1 million. 

Tesla also did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CBS News on the lawsuit and its allegations. CBS News has not independently confirmed Diagne's employment.

Hilliard said Brady reported the assault to Tesla and to the Travis County Sheriff's Office but didn't know the name of the man or have video of the incident and wasn't able to get either from Tesla.

The Travis County Sheriff's Office confirmed to CBS News that it investigated, but said the case has now been closed "because the suspect is deceased." 

Hilliard said he believed local law enforcement, though not necessarily the Austin Police Department, knew of Diagne and had screened video of him at Tesla prior to Sunday's attack.   

"It may have been an early warning sign of a far greater danger," Hilliard said.