TEXAS MASSACRE
A YOUNG gunman opened fire in an El Paso, Texas, shopping area packed with as many as 3000 people in the busy back-to-school season on Saturday, leaving 20 dead and more than two dozen injured.
Governor Greg Abbott called the incident in the Texas border city “one of the most deadly days in the history of Texas”.
Police said authorities were investigating if it was a hate crime.
The suspect was arrested without incident outside the Walmart near the Cielo Vista Mall, El Paso Police Chief Greg Allen said.
Two law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity identified the suspect as 21-year-old Patrick Crusius.
El Paso police did not release his name but confirmed the gunman was from Allen, near Dallas.
Many of the victims were shot at the Walmart, police said.
“The scene was a horrific one,” Chief Allen said, adding many of the 26 people who were hurt had life-threatening injuries.
He said police found a post online possibly written by the suspect.
“Right now we have a manifesto from this individual that indicates, to some degree, it has a nexus to potential hate crime,” he said.
The shooting came less than a week after a gunman opened fire on a California food festival. Santino William Legan, 19, killed three people and injured 13 others last Sunday at the Gilroy Garlic Festival, and died of a self- inflicted gunshot wound.
El Paso, which has about 680,000 residents, is in West Texas and is across the border from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
Residents quickly volunteered to give blood after the shooting, and police and military members were helping people look for missing loved ones.
“It’s chaos right now,” said Austin Johnson, an Army medic at Fort Bliss, who volunteered to help at the mall and later at a school serving as a reunification centre.
Adriana Quezada, 39, said she was in the women’s clothing section of Walmart with her two children when she heard gunfire.
“But I thought they were hits, like roof construction,” Ms Quezada said of the shots. Her 19-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son threw themselves to the ground, then ran out of the store through an emergency exit. They were not hurt, Ms Quezada said.
She claims she saw four men, dressed in black, moving together firing guns indiscriminately. Police later said they believed the suspect, who was armed with a rifle, was the only shooter.
Ryan Mielke, a spokesman for University Medical Centre, said 13 were brought to the hospital with injuries, including one who died. Two of the injured were children who were being transferred to El Paso Children’s Hospital, Mr Mielke said
Eleven other victims were being treated at Del Sol Medical Centre, hospital spokesman Victor Guerrero said. Those victims’ ages ranged from 35 to 82, Mr Guerrero said.