This archive report was first published on 9 August 2019.
On August 3, 2019, a devastating mass shooting occurred at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, leaving 22 people dead and many more injured.
According to an affidavit filed by Detective Adrian Garcia of the El Paso Police Department, the suspect, Patrick W. Crusius, 21, was arrested minutes after the massacre and confessed to the crime.
Crusius, who is white, stepped out of a vehicle with his hands up and declared, “I’m the shooter,” the police said.
He also divulged to the police that he had targeted “Mexicans,” according to the document.
After waiving his Miranda rights, Crusius told the police that he had used an AK-47-style rifle and brought multiple magazines with him from Allen, Texas, to carry out the killings.
Crusius’ mother had called the Allen Police Department in the weeks before the shooting, asking whether her son was mature enough to handle the rifle he had recently ordered.
The authorities have said that the gunman wrote a four-page manifesto that said he was carrying out the attack in “response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”
Latinos around the United States were deeply shaken by the shooting, which is the deadliest attack to target Latinos in modern American history.
The suspect is facing a state capital murder charge and is being held without bond. The El Paso prosecutor has vowed to seek the death penalty, and federal prosecutors are considering charging the suspect under hate crime statutes, as well as firearm laws that can carry a death sentence.
