El Paso shooting near Walmart where 23 were killed brings ‘traumatic memories’
One person was killed and three wounded on Wednesday in a shooting at a shopping mall in El Paso, Texas, close to a Walmart where 23 people were killed in a racist attack targeting Hispanic people in 2019.
El Paso police said two people had been taken into custody. Details of what led to the shooting remained unclear.
The interim El Paso police chief, Peter Pacillas, said the Cielo Vista Mall was still considered a crime scene, and would remain locked down until authorities had completed their investigation.
“There is no more danger. I want to repeat that: There is no more danger to the public,” Pacillas said.
The shooting took place across a large parking lot from the Walmart where 23 people were killed in 2019. El Paso, with a largely Latino population of about 700,000 people, sits on the US border with Mexico.
“Today’s shooting at the Cielo Vista Mall has brought back traumatic memories for many of us,” the Democratic congresswoman Veronica Escobar, whose district includes El Paso, said on Twitter. “Please know you are not alone.”
She urged anyone who needed it to reach out to the city’s crisis help line.
In 2022, more than 600 mass shootings occurred in the US, in which at least four people were killed or wounded, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
The US has seen dozens killed in such shootings in 2023, most recently on Monday at Michigan State University, where three students were killed and five wounded.
In January, 11 people were killed in Monterey Park, a Los Angeles-area city, as they welcomed the Lunar New Year at a dance hall popular with older Asian Americans.
Pacillas said the two people taken into custody after the El Paso shooting and all the victims were males.
University Medical Center in El Paso said two gunshot victims there were in critical condition. The condition of the third victim was not immediately known.
Police said the shooting was reported in the shopping mall’s food court.
Authorities set up a reunification center at a nearby high school for those affected by the shooting. The FBI was assisting El Paso police.
The Republican governor, Greg Abbott, said he had spoken to the mayor of El Paso and offered state assistance.