Official pledges ‘swift and certain justice’ coming to El Paso shooter
EL PASO, Texas — The attack on a Walmart and shopping center here, during which a gunman killed 20 people and wounded dozens, is being viewed as a domestic terrorist attack, authorities said Sunday.
Federal authorities are “seriously considering” bringing hate crime charges in the case, John Bash, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, said Sunday. Those charges could carry the death penalty. Local prosecutors also say they plan to seek a death sentence in the case.
“We are treating it as a domestic terrorism case, and we’re going to do what we do to terrorists in this country,” Bash said.
“Which is deliver swift and certain justice.”
The rampage in El Paso apparently began outside the Walmart on Saturday morning. A routine morning gave way to scenes of people screaming, running and dodging bullets in parking lots. One witness said the attacker was “shooting randomly.”
Law enforcement authorities have delved into the background of 21-year-old Patrick Crusius, whom two officials identified as the suspect in the shooting here.
Crusius, from the Dallas suburb of Allen, surrendered to police, giving officials a relatively unusual chance to directly interrogate a mass shooting suspect. In many cases, attackers are killed or take their own lives.
Police said Crusius has been cooperative, but declined to go into detail about what he may have said.
“He was forthcoming with information,” Greg Allen, the El Paso police chief, told reporters. “He basically didn’t hold anything back. Particular questions were asked and he responded.”
Authorities in Texas filed a capital murder charge against Crusius, according to court records, and he was booked into the downtown El Paso jail. No attorney was listed in those records as of Sunday; the public defender’s office did not respond to messages about whether it had been appointed to represent him.
Jaime Esparza, the El Paso district attorney, said the capital murder charge is eligible for a possible death sentence and left no question about what prosecutors would pursue.
“We will seek the death penalty,” Esparza said Sunday. “The loss of life is so great. We certainly have never seen this in our community . ... This community is rocked, shocked and saddened by what has happened here.”
Federal charges, when ultimately filed, would not supersede any charges brought by local prosecutors in Texas, but would instead operate as a parallel prosecution.
The shooting in El Paso set off waves of anger, sadness and recriminations, fueling calls for stricter gun control as the country reeled from yet another bullet-riddled rampage in yet another city.
What may have motivated the attacker remained a focus of investigators, who have examined a manifesto posted online that included screeds against immigrants. Authorities believe the Texas shooting suspect posted the document, officials said, but continue to gather evidence.
The manifesto was another unsettlingly familiar part of the tragedy. It listed angry — and, at times, jumbled — motivations for the attack, including rants about a “Hispanic invasion.”
El Paso Sheriff Richard Wiles, who oversees the jail holding the suspect, called the attack racist in a Facebook post Saturday night.
“This Anglo man came here to kill Hispanics,” he wrote. “I’m outraged and you should be too. This entire nation should be outraged. In this day and age, with all the serious issues we face, we are still confronted with people who will kill another for the sole reason of the color of their skin.”
The mood in El Paso turned from shock on Saturday to anger on Sunday as it seemed increasingly likely that a man had driven nine hours to kill people because they were Latino. At a news conference by immigration advocates and community leaders, immigration attorney Carlos Spector placed blame for the attack at the White House.
“What is responsible for this is the racist language of Donald Trump,” Spector said. “Since he was elected the Mexican community in the border has been in his gun sights.”
The shooting in El Paso was the deadliest mass shooting in the country since November 2017, when a gunman killed 26 people in a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. It also came a little more than a year after a gunman in Santa Fe, Texas, opened fire, killing 10 people at a high school.
Stephen Flaherty, the trauma medical director at El Paso’s Del Sol Medical Center, described the difficult work of trying to save lives after the shooting.
“It was a long night,” he told reporters. “It was a long day.”
He praised the many people who came out to donate blood, saying that was critical. Flaherty also said that he expects a number of victims will need to return to the operating room in the coming days.
The attack reverberated beyond America’s borders. Mexico’s foreign minister expressed outrage Sunday at the killings and said his government would announce legal action to protect the Mexican and Mexican American communities in the United States.
Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said a number of Mexicans had been killed in the attack — although he did not specify the number — and nine wounded.