Toll hits 31 in US shootings; Trump to visit El Paso today
Ohio to outline proposals designed to deal with gun violence and mental health; website founder describes himself as ‘naive and ignorant;’ Mexico to probe shooting as an act of terrorism
Two more victims of a shooting rampage at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, died of their wounds on Monday, police said, raising the death toll to 22 in the massacre as US President Donald Trump planned a visit to the stricken community.
The latest fatalities bring to 31 the number of victims killed during the weekend in mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, that have touched off a new furor over gun violence in the United States.
Mexico will investigate the mass shooting in El Paso as an act of terrorism and may request the suspected shooter be extradited to Mexico for trial, the country’s foreign minister said on Monday.
Eight Mexicans were killed in Saturday’s rampage at a Walmart store in the Texas border city, and six of the wounded Mexican nationals remained hospitalised on Monday, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard told reporters at the Mexican consulate in El Paso.
He said he would ask US authorities to turn the bodies over to their Mexican families as soon as possible.
Ebrard said he would meet with the Mexican atorney general on Tuesday to share results of the US investigation and build a terrorism case.
“We consider this an act of terrorism, in this case carried out in US territory, but an act of terrorism against Mexicans,” Ebrard said at the Mexican consulate in El Paso. “It will be the first investigative case of this importance in the history of Mexico regarding terrorism in United States territory,” he added.
The El Paso killings prompted 8chan founder Frederick Brennan, in an interview with the New York Times, to call for the site to be shut down.
Brennan described himself as “naive and ignorant,” likening the platform 8chan to Frankenstein’s monster, with no limit to its extremism.
Brennan, 25, who lives in the Philippines, said the free-wheeling web board he created in 2013 had become a hive of white supremacy, anonymous hate, and Neo-nazism since he sold it to a fellow American, and said he felt a sense of guilt, “sometimes”.
“If I could go back and not create 8chan at all, I probably would,” he told Reuters in an interview.
Facing pressure to take action ater the shooting, Ohio’s Republican governor plans to outline his proposals designed to deal with gun violence and mental health.
Governor Mike Dewine said he will discuss those ideas in detail on Tuesday, a litle more than a day ater hundreds of people chanted “Do something!” while he spoke at a vigil for nine people killed in Dayton over the weekend by a gunman with an AR-15 style gun.
Texas Governor Greg Abbot said Saturday’s rampage appeared to be a hate crime and federal prosecutors called it domestic terrorism.
El Paso Mayor Dee Margo told reporters at an aternoon news conference that Trump would visit the city on Wednesday.
The mayor asked that the visit amid a divisive gun control debate not be politicised.
El Paso Police Chief Greg Allen said the suspect Patrick Crusius, 21, was cooperating with investigators.
Crusius’s grandparents said in a statement read to reporters by a family member outside their home in the Dallas suburb of Allen, 1,046km east of El Paso, that they were devastated by the atack.
“He lived with us in our house in Allen, Texas, while he atended Collin College,” they said. “He moved out of our house six weeks ago and has spent a few nights here while we were out of town.”
In El Paso, residents brought crosses representing each of the victims to a growing memorial site near the store on Monday.
A crowd of several hundred classmates, teachers and relatives filled a high school football stadium in the El Paso suburb of Horizon on Monday evening for a memorial service honoring the youngest of the 22 people slain - 15-year-old Javier Rodriguez. Friends said he held dual Us-mexican citizenship.
The Texas rampage was followed just 13 hours later by the mass shooting in Ohio and came a week ater a man shot dead three people at a California garlic festival before killing himself.
In Dayton, Ohio, a gunman in body armor and a mask killed nine people in less than a minute and wounded 27 others in the downtown historic district before he was shot dead by police.
Police said the El Paso suspect opened fire with a rifle on Walmart shoppers, many of them bargain-hunting for back-to-school supplies, then surrendered to officers who confronted him outside the store.