Death toll rises to 22 in El Paso
The death toll in a Walmart shooting rose to 22 as residents of El Paso, Texas, tried to settle into their new reality Monday and politicians debated whether President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric contributed to the massacre.
Officials updated totals to 22 killed and 24 injured. The quick, devastating violence left the city reeling – El Paso had only 23 homicides in all of last year.
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’rourke unleashed a profanity-laced tirade on Sunday when asked whether Trump could turn things around and help the situation in the border town he calls home. Media outlets around the country, and around the world, decried his role in inspiring a shooter who gunned down 20 people. The result, according to another El Paso-based member of Congress, is a Hispanic population increasingly in the crosshairs.
“All of this has happened because Hispanic people have been dehumanized. They have been dehumanized by the president, by his enablers, by other politicians,” Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-texas, said Monday morning on MSNBC’S “Morning Joe.” “This is one of the lowest points in American history, and if we don’t recognize this as such, we will not have the turning point that we so desperately need as a country.”
Trump, who spoke little Sunday about the shootings that stunned the nation over the weekend, delivered a speech from the White House on Monday in which he bashed the “twisted monster” who committed the El Paso shooting.
The president confirmed that Patrick Crusius wrote a 2,356-word “manifesto” that was posted online shortly before the shooting and was filled with “racist hate.” Crusius, who is white, laced his manifesto with anti-immigrant and racist rhetoric, saying he advocates a plan to divide the nation into territories by race.
“In our voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy,” Trump said. “These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Cultural change is hard, but each of us can choose to build a culture that celebrates the inherent worth and dignity of every human life.”
The president did not call for any action to limit the availability of guns in the U.S. But Trump called for the passage of “red flag” laws that allow law enforcement officials to take firearms away from people who are deemed to “pose a grave risk to public safety.”
Back in El Paso, investigators continued gathering evidence in the capital murder case against Crusius, 21, of Allen, Texas. He was booked into the El Paso County Jail early Sunday. He is accused of walking into the Walmart near a shopping mall Saturday morning and opening fire, setting off panic as hundreds of customers and employees fled, police said.