The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Shootings
day — sparked grimly familiar scenes of panic and grief as public places were yet again terrorized by a hail of bullets.
Dayton: Heavily armed
In the hours before the mass shooting in Dayton, Connor and Megan Betts, brother and sister, drove the family’s 2007 Corolla together to visit the city’s historic Oregon District, an area alive on a summer night with restaurants, bars and nightlife.
Then, police said, they separated.
It is not clear what Megan Betts, 22, did at this point.
But police said Connor Betts, 24, donned a mask, body armor and ear protection. Wielding an “AR-15 like” assault weapon with magazines containing 100 rounds, he set out on a street rampage that, while it lasted less than a minute, claimed the lives of nine people and injured 27 others.
Among the first to die was his sister. Her male companion was also injured but survived.
Less than a minute into the barrage, police patrolling the area “neutralized” Betts — he was shot to death — as he was about to enter a bar where dozens of people had run into hiding. A bouncer was injured by shrapnel.
At least six police officers fired rounds at the suspect.
“Had this individual made it through the doorway of Ned Peppers with that level of weaponry, there would have been catastrophic injury and loss of life,” Dayton Police Chief Richard Biehl said. “So stopping him before he could get inside there — where you saw people were running in there for protection — was essential to minimizing, to the degree we could, casualties and deaths from this incident.”
Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley said 27 people who were injured in the shooting and its aftermath were treated and 15 were discharged.
Exactly what precipitated the chaos is unknown.
The guns had been legally purchased, police said, and there was nothing in Betts’ adult criminal background that would have raised concerns — he’d only had traffic tickets for speeding and failure to yield.
Biehl said they are still trying to answer “the question that everyone wants to know: Why?”
“As a mayor, this is a day that we all dread happening,” Whaley said. “And certainly what’s very sad as I’ve gotten messages from cities across the country is that so many of us have gone through it.”
El Paso: A possible hate crime
Federal authorities said the shooting in El Paso will be handled as a domestic terrorism case as they weighed hate-crime charges against the suspected gunman that could carry the death penalty.
A local prosecutor announced that he would file capital murder charges, declaring that the alleged assailant had “lost the right to be among us.”
Investigators were examining a racist, anti-immigrant screed that was posted online shortly beforehand. Detectives sought to determine if it was written by the man who was arrested. The border city has figured prominently in the immigration debate and is home to 680,000 people, most of them Latino.
John F. Bash, the United States attorney for the Western District of Texas, said the shooting seemed to meet the statutory definition of domestic terrorism, in that “it appears to be designed to intimidate a civilian population, to say the least.”
“And we’re going to do what we do to terrorists in this country, which is deliver swift and certain justice,” he said.
Using a rifle, the El Paso gunman opened fire in an area packed with as many as 3,000 people during the busy back-toschool shopping season.
Law enforcement officials identified the suspect as 21-year-old Patrick Crusius from Allen, a Dallas suburb that is a nearly 10-hour drive from El Paso. He was arrested without police firing any shots, authorities said.
El Paso Police Chief Greg Allen said the suspect was cooperative and “forthcoming with information.”
“He basically didn’t hold anything back. Particular questions were asked, and he responded in the way that needed to be answered,” Allen said.
El Paso police said they did not know where the weapon was purchased. Allen acknowledged that it is legal under Texas law to carry a long gun openly in a public place.
“Of course, normal individuals seeing that type of weapon might be alarmed,” but before he began firing, the suspect was technically “within the realm of the law,” Allen said.
The attack targeted a shopping area about 5 miles from the main border checkpoint with Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Many of the victims were shot at a Walmart.
“The scene was a horrific one,” Allen said.