For Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse, Thursday was just another day at the office. He parked his car, got out, and was gunned down.

Mark Hasse "had an absolute passion for putting away bad guys, and he enjoyed nothing better," his boss said.

Now investigators are looking into whether that passion led to Hasse being gunned down outside his office in Kaufman, Texas, where he was an assistant district attorney. Hasse was killed in the parking lot of the Kaufman County courthouse Thursday morning, shot several times after "a very small, very short confrontation," Police Chief Chris Aulbaugh said.

"It was apparent that he was not expecting to have anything happen," Aulbaugh said. "He was on his way to his office."

It's very sad, but there's also more to the story. A couple of months ago, the Department of Justice indicted 34 members of the Texas Aryan Brotherhood in connection with a joint task force that involved just about every county in Texas. Previous to that, they had two members of the Aryan Brotherhood plea-bargain to federal racketeering charges.