El Paso, Texas: Police and FBI investigators in Texas searched for clues on Sunday to explain what drove a young gunman from the Dallas area to kill 20 people at a Walmart store hundreds of miles away in the border city of El Paso.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott said Saturday morning’s rampage appeared to be a hate crime, and police cited a “manifesto” they attributed to the suspect as evidence that the bloodshed was racially motivated.
Many shoppers in the busy store were buying back-to-school supplies when they found themselves caught up in the latest mass shooting to rock the US, just six days after a teenage gunman killed three people at a summer food festival in Northern California.
Who is the suspect?
The suspect was officially identified as a 21-year-old white male from Allen, a Dallas suburb some 1,046km east of El Paso, which lies along the Rio Grande, across the US-Mexico border from Ciudad Juarez. Citing law enforcement officials, multiple news media reports named the suspect as Patrick Crusius. El Paso police chief Greg Allen said authorities were examining a manifesto from the suspect indicating “there is a potential nexus to a hate crime”.
So isn’t this a terror attack?
A four-page statement posted on 8chan, an online message board often used by extremists, and believed to have been authored by the suspect, called the Walmart attack “a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas”. It also expressed for support for the gunman who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March.
CNN reported that the FBI has opened a domestic terror investigation into the Texas shooting.
But why target El Paso?
El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, together with the neighboring city of Las Cruces, New Mexico, form a metropolitan border area of some 2.5 million residents constituting the largest bilingual, bi-national population in North America.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said three Mexican nationals were among the dead, and six others were among the wounded. The carnage ranked as the eighth-deadliest mass shooting in modern US history, after a 1984 shooting in San Ysidro, California, that claimed 21 lives.
“We are going to aggressively prosecute it both as capital murder but also as a hate crime, which is exactly what it appears to be,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott told reporters, adding, “I don’t want to get ahead of the evidence.”
How did the shooting unfold?
Details of how the shooting unfolded were not immediately clear. But video footage from the scene showed victims lying on the ground inside and outside the store. One shopper said the gunshots sounded like they began outside the building.
The suspect surrendered to police as officers closed in on him, and he was taken into custody without incident, authorities said. Video posted on social media appeared to show him being handcuffed by police and placed in a squad car.
How have US politicians reacted?
The shooting immediately reverberated on the US presidential campaign trail, with several Democratic candidates denouncing the rise of gun violence and repeating calls for tighter gun control measures. At least two candidates, Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, and El Paso native Beto O’Rourke, a former congressman, drew connections to a resurgence in white nationalism and xenophobic politics in the United States. “America is under attack from homegrown white nationalist terrorism,” Buttigieg said at a candidates forum in Las Vegas. On Twitter, US President Donald Trump branded the shooting “an act of cowardice,” adding, “I know that I stand with everyone in this country to condemn today’s hateful act. There are no reasons or excuses that will ever justify killing innocent people.”
UAE leaders condole US President on shootings
Abu Dhabi: President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan has sent a cable of condolences to President Donald Trump of the USA, on the victims of the Ohio and Texas mass shootings. According to reports, at least 30 people were killed and dozens injured in the separate mass shooting incidents. His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, and His Highness Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, also sent similar condolences messages to President Trump.
Where is El Paso?
El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, together with the neighboring city of Las Cruces, New Mexico, form a metropolitan border area of some 2.5 million residents constituting the largest bilingual, bi-national population in North America.
The list: A year of bloodshed in US
July 28: 3 killed; Gilroy, California
An annual garlic festival in an agricultural community south of San Jose turned deadly when a 19-year-old man opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle.
July 6: 5 killed; St. Louis County, Missouri
The bodies of five men who had been fatally shot were discovered in an apartment building by police officers in north St. Louis County.
June 8: 5 killed; White Swan, Washington
Five members of the Yakama Nation were killed in White Swan, a remote community on the Yakama Indian Reservation in central Washington state. Four people were arrested in the shootings.
May 31: 12 killed; Virginia Beach, Virginia
A city engineer quit his job and then went on a shooting rampage at Building No. 2 of the Virginia Beach Municipal Center.
February 15: 5 killed; Aurora, Illinois
A disgruntled employee who had been fired from his job returned to a suburban Chicago factory with a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun with a laser sight.
January 23: 5 killed; Sebring, Florida
Five women were fatally shot while they were lying on the ground in a SunTrust Bank branch by a 21-year-old man, who called an emergency dispatcher and said, “I have shot five people.”
