A sheriff’s office is investigating the murder of an Indian man who was shot and killed in front of his house on Thursday in Lancaster, South Carolina. An official with the Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office said that they did not know whether or not the shooting had anything to do with the victim’s race.

“We don’t have any facts that we have uncovered yet that says he was killed for a racial reason,” Doug Barfield, an attorney for the Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office, told BuzzFeed News. “We don’t know that it’s not, we don’t know that it is.”

Harnish Patel, 43, was shot twice after returning home from the convenience store he owned, the Speedee Mart, which was about a 10-minute drive from his residence. Police received a report of gunshots and screaming shortly after 11:30 p.m. The neighborhood is in “a rural area of our county,” Barfield said, adding that local law enforcement agents “knew [Patel] well” because the store was a quarter mile from the sheriff’s office. Patel was dead in his front yard when first responders arrived.

Barfield said that the office would not “comment on the facts” of the investigation. He would not say whether there was evidence of robbery or any other apparent motive. Nor would he say whether authorities had any information, through witnesses or surveillance cameras, about the possible race of the suspect.

“We have information which I’m not going to say here and we are looking at all possible motives,” Barfield said. “We have a full team of investigators working round the clock.”

A man who picked up the phone at the Speedee Mart told BuzzFeed News that Patel was “like a nephew” to him, and that he was unaware if authorities had any suspects. He said that he had “no idea” why Patel was killed.