30 people die in two mass shootings in Texas and Ohio
EL PASO: Two mass shootings in a matter of hours left 30 people dead, fuelling an angry debate on America’s rampant gun violence and bringing new charges on Sunday that President Donald Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric encourages extremist violence.
The rampages turned innocent snippets of everyday life into nightmares of bloodshed: 20 people shot dead while shopping at a crowded Walmart in El Paso, Texas on Saturday morning, and nine more outside a bar in a popular nightlife district in Dayton, Ohio just 13 hours later.
In Texas another 26 people were wounded, and 27 in Ohio. In Dayton, the shooter, armed with a long gun, was killed by police in less than a minute. They just happened to be nearby, and prevented a casualty toll that could have gone into the hundreds, Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley said. WHITE MAN Still, in those few seconds the shooter managed to mow down dozens of people.
“You could see the bodies actually start to fall and we knew it was bigger than just even a shootout,” Anthony Reynolds, who was outside the Dayton bar when the shooting started, told NBC News.
Reynolds described the shooter as a white man dressed all in black, with his face covered and armed with an assault rifle. Authorities have not identified this shooter but news outlets also said he was white.
In Texas, a suspect surrendered shortly after the massacre and was described in media as a 21-yearold white man named Patrick Crusius who may have posted online a manifesto denouncing a “Hispanic invasion” of Texas. El Paso, on the border with Mexico.