Colorado investigators have headed to Texas to try to determine whether a paroled prison inmate who led deputies on a high-speed pursuit before crashing into a semi and opening fire on officers is connected to the killings of Colorado's prisons chief and a Denver-area pizza delivery driver.

Twenty-eight-year-old Evan Spencer Ebel was hospitalized Thursday night after a shootout with Texas authorities and was not expected to survive.

Police in Colorado wouldn't say whether they believed Ebel killed Department of Corrections executive director Tom Clements at his Monument, Colo., home Tuesday, or Nathan Leon, the pizza driver found shot to death Sunday in Golden, Colo.

Denver police said on their Twitter feed Thursday that there was a "strong connection" between the Leon case and the Texas incident.

The Denver Post first reported Ebel's name, and that he was in a white supremacist prison gang called the 211s.