OAK CREEK, Wis. — The gunman who killed six worshipers at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin was identified as a 40-year-old U.S. Army veteran and authorities said they were investigating possible links to white supremacist groups and his membership in skinhead rock bands.

The assailant, shot dead by police at the scene on Sunday, was identified as Wade Michael Page. He served as a soldier in the Army from 1992 to 1998, said police chief John Edwards in the Milwaukee suburb of Oak Creek where the 400-member temple is located.

Survivors described women and children hiding in the pantry of the temple’s community kitchen as the gunman stormed through the building. “Everyone was falling on top of one another,” said Parminder Toor, 54, speaking in Punjabi as her daughter-in-law, Jaskiran Kaur, translated.

“It was dark and we were all crammed in.” One of the women who made it into the pantry had been shot in the hand, and there was “blood everywhere,” said Toor.

Federal authorities said they were treating the attack as a possible act of domestic terrorism, and were scouring Page’s military records and investigating whether the killing was a hate crime.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, Page was a member of two racist bands named End Apathy and Definite Hate, “a band whose album ‘Violent Victory’ featured a gruesome drawing of a disembodied white arm punching a black man in the face.”

A MySpace page for a band that appears to be one of those identified by the SPLC, End Apathy, includes songs with titles such as “Self Destruct,” “Submission” and “Insignificant,” as well as pictures of three heavily tattooed band members. The singer/guitarist of the band is identified as Wade on the page.

“The music is a sad commentary on our sick society and the problems that prevent true progress,” the band’s profile says.

Page tried to buy goods from the National Alliance, a neo-Nazi group, in 2000, said Heidi Beirich, director of the intelligence project at the SPLC.

The SPLC describes the National Alliance on its website as “perhaps the most dangerous and best organized neo-Nazi formation in America.”

The SPLC drew attention to a 2010 interview with the white supremacist website Label 56 in which Page said he had played in various bands since 2000, when he left his native Colorado on a motorcycle.

Page said of his lyrics: “The topics vary from sociological issues, religion, and how the value of human life has been degraded by being submissive to tyranny and hypocrisy that we are subjugated to.”

U.S. military sources said Page had been discharged from the Army in 1998 for “patterns of misconduct.”

Page had served in the military for six years but was never posted overseas. He was a psychological operations specialist and missile repairman who was last stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the sources said.

In June 1998 he was disciplined for being drunk on duty and had his rank reduced to specialist from sergeant. He was not eligible to re-enlist.

FBI special agent Teresa Carlson said authorities were interviewing Page’s family and associates, searching for a motive behind a shooting that killed six people and seriously wounded three, including a police officer, at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin.

A fourth person was wounded less seriously.

The dead were five men and one woman, aged between 39 and 84.