Shooting Puts Life On Hold For Many
EL PASO, Texas — They stand beside him, smoothing his hair, holding his hands, massaging his feet and making him laugh. Mario De Alba’s loved ones have kept this bedside vigil in a hospital room for over a month.
Mr. De Alba, 48, was shot in the back in the massacre inside an El Paso Walmart on August 3. While a gunman stalked the aisles, Mr. De Alba shielded his wife and 9-year-old daughter in a bank at the front of the store. Others crowded into the same corner. A man softly prayed. The gunman saw them and opened fire.
Mr. De Alba drew his wife and daughter close to protect them, but a bullet struck his wife’s thumb and breast. Another hit his daughter’s leg. Several of those around them, including the man who prayed, were killed. Mr. De Alba’s wife and daughter have since been released from the hospital. But he remains at the University Medical Center of El Paso, undergoing operations — three so far — and fighting to regain his strength.
On that August morning, Mr. De Alba’s life — like the lives of the other survivors and the relatives of the 22 people who were killed — paused. Most of the dozens who were wounded were treated at hospitals and released, but a handful remain hospitalized.
For the De Alba family, the slow re
covery has been marked by dislocation. Mr. De Alba lives in Chihuahua City, the capital of the Mexican state of Chihuahua, with his wife and daughter. But since August 3, the family has effectively lived in El Paso: Mr. De Alba in his hospital room, and his wife and daughter at a nearby hotel, where his mother and his sister have also relocated from Mexico. Erika, his daughter, should be in school. Oliva, his wife, is the principal at Erika’s school, but she, too, has not wanted to leave. In Chihuahua City, Mr. De Alba runs a shop that repairs and sells washing machines and dryers, but now the business is closed.
This is what the recovery from a mass shooting looks like: There are physical, emotional, financial and logistical tolls, but in a border city like El Paso, binational ones, too.
“I can’t move forward,” Mr. De Alba said. “I can’t take my daughter to school. I’m not able to work. I have bills to pay. But my world has now stopped.”
American immigration officials have assisted the De Alba family — Mexican citizens who are among the thousands who legally cross the border daily to work, shop or study in El Paso — and given them permission to stay during Mr. De Alba’s recovery.
Mr. De Alba faces more weeks in the hospital, and he worries that his family will run out of money and have to return to Mexico. He worries about his daughter not being in school and his wife not working.
“If they’re not here,” he said of his family, “who’s going to take care of me?”
His sister Cristina leaned over and touched his head. “No, you won’t be alone,” she whispered.
On the morning of August 29, Mr. De Alba steeled himself for another operation. His cousin, Lucero De Alba, was visiting from Ciudad Juárez, El Paso’s next-door sister city in Mexico. She had waited three hours to cross the border at one of the international bridges. With her there, as well as his sister and his 79-year-old mother, Maria Montes, the mood shifted.
Laughter filled the sterile room. Smiling, Mr. De Alba said he had something on his mind. When the gunman opened fire, he had just paid a lot of money for a cart full of groceries, clothes and school supplies. He had tucked the receipt into his shirt pocket. Maybe Walmart would give him a refund, he joked.
Authorities said that the suspect in the massacre, Patrick Crusius, 21, had posted an anti-Latino manifesto minutes before the attack, writing that he was acting in response to “the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”
Mr. De Alba says he does not understand the gunman, but he does not hate him. “He’s a person who doesn’t even love himself,” he said. “A life with no purpose.”
Later, he cracked a smile. “The only people I hate in my life,” he said, “are the customers who don’t pay when I fix their washer or dryer.”
Lucero laughed. “He’s in a good mood every day,” she said. “It runs in the family.”
The massacre in El Paso was one of three recent mass shootings in the United States: on August 4, nine people were killed and 27 wounded in Dayton, Ohio; seven people were killed and 23 were wounded on August 31 in Odessa, Texas.
On August 2, Mr. De Alba drove four hours from Chihuahua City to El Paso to pick up his wife and daughter, who had arrived at the city’s airport from a trip to Denver. They planned to shop at Walmart the next morning before driving home.
It was not yet 11 a.m. when the De Albas finished paying for their items. The gunman, wearing earmuffs and carrying an AK-47-style rifle, walked in. Mr. De Alba said he did not hear the gunman say anything. “Serio,” Mr. De Alba said in Spanish of the gunman’s expression. “Serious.”
Mr. De Alba rushed Oliva and Erika into the bank, across from the registers. Others followed as gunshots echoed across the store. Soon there was blood. He remembered seeing a nose and an ear on the floor.
A few moments later, Mr. De Alba and his family rushed outside. He tried to drive them to a hospital. They got to their car, but he had no strength to put it into gear, he said. Ambulances arrived and he told a paramedic to take his wife and daughter, but to leave him there to die. The paramedic refused his request, and helped him into an ambulance.
“When he arrived at the hospital, he was unconscious,” Lucero said. “His father died two years ago. He said that he saw him in the emergency room waiting for him. For seven seconds, he was diagnosed dead.”
Mr. De Alba had serious internal injuries, and his recuperation has been slow. Doctors recently found pus inside of him from intestinal leakage. He was not paralyzed, but his family wonders how mobile he will be when he is released.
His daughter and wife stopped by his room before his latest surgery. Four weeks after the massacre, Erika was walking with a slight limp and Oliva still had a cast on her wrist and thumb. Mr. De Alba said he believed that they could have been killed, like the man praying beside them.
Erika, he said, is his inspiration to recover. “I’ve been focusing on being grateful,” Mr. De Alba said. “My daughter visits almost every day. What else can I ask of life?”