A Texas taco shop diner killed an intruder. Now he faces legal scrutiny.

Hiding under a table at a Houston restaurant from a man they believed was wielding a gun, two people threw money out onto the tiled floor.

The man, dressed in black clothing and a ski mask, stopped at the table, picked up the cash from the floor and turned back toward the front of the restaurant, his arm still outstretched with what looked like a firearm.

As he continued walking, another man who was sitting at a booth brandished his own gun.

The customer shot the robber nine times, killing him, video footage from the restaurant shows. Afterward, the armed customer and the other patrons fled the restaurant Thursday evening, according to Houston police.

Officials have identified the man who died as Eric Eugene Washington, 30. The weapon he had been carrying was not a genuine firearm but rather one made of plastic, Houston police confirmed to KHOU.

The day after the incident, Houston police released surveillance photos of the customer with the gun, saying that he was “wanted for questioning.” On Monday, the department announced that homicide detectives had spoken with the man, identifying him only as a 46-year-old. Though he has not been arrested or charged, police said the case will be referred to a grand jury in Harris County, meaning he could face charges down the road.

If the case goes to trial, legal experts say it might get complicated.

Officers responded to a call about a shooting late Thursday at the address of El Ranchito #4, a Mexican restaurant, according to a news release from Houston police. Witnesses said that a man had entered the restaurant and pointed a pistol at its patrons, demanding their money.

The customer with the gun had thrown cash onto the floor as the intruder walked by his booth, collecting money from several patrons. When the attempted robber came back by the booth, walking toward the front door at the restaurant, the customer pulled out his gun and fired.

Unedited video footage shows he shot Washington four times in quick succession.

Then, after Washington fell to the ground, the customer fired four more times, walking toward his body.

He fired the ninth and final shot standing close to the top half of Washington’s body, the video shows.

While police have not publicly released footage of the shooting, it was obtained by local news outlets and has been viewed at least 15 million times across social media, stirring debates about whether the use of force was justified.

Under Texas law, people are allowed to use force — including deadly force — against another person when they believe it is “immediately necessary to protect the actor against the other’s use or attempted use of unlawful force.”

“If anyone in that space felt that they were in danger of being shot and, when you have a gun being waved in your face, they felt that they were in danger of being harmed, they would have been justified in using self-defense,” said Kami Chavis, a law professor and director of the William & Mary Center for Criminal Justice Policy and Reform in Virginia.

Nathan Beedle, the misdemeanor trial bureau chief in the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, cited the state’s penal code in an interview with KHOU about the restaurant shooting.

“Whether someone uses deadly force in the situation, that is presumed to be correct under Texas law,” he said.

The state’s stand-your-ground law — hotly contested legislation that expands self-defense rights by removing a person’s “duty to retreat” before using force — will likely not be involved, experts said.

In this case, the armed customer was sitting in a booth in the same room as someone he thought was pointing a firearm at patrons — creating a reasonable belief that force was necessary and making the issue of retreating void, said T. Markus Funk, an attorney and author of “Rethinking Self-Defence: The ‘Ancient Right’s’ Rationale Disentangled.”

“This is a pretty basic self-defense scenario where the peculiarities of Texas law don’t really factor in,” Funk said.

However, the customer fired as the intruder walked toward the front of the restaurant, meaning he might have been leaving. That sequence could add complexity to the case.

“So the question you want to ask is, well, was the threat gone?” Chavis said. “Because if the threat is no longer present, then of course you can’t use self-defense.”

After firing the last shot, the armed customer returned the stolen money to the other diners, Houston police said. He also took the fake gun from Washington’s body, flinging it across the room and yelling, the footage shows.

“The fact that he kind of carefully picked it up out of the guy’s hand and carried it away shows that he objectively and reasonably believed it was a real gun,” Funk said.

But prosecutors could argue that the ninth shot was not necessary to continue protecting the people in the restaurant from the intruder, he said.

“I think most jurors will likely conclude the first eight shots were justified,” Funk said. “And I could see some jurors having a harder time and some prosecutors having a harder time with the ninth shot.”