EL PASO, Texas — The confessed shooter who in August targeted Mexicans at an El Paso Walmart, killing 22 and injuring dozens more, will face federal hate crime charges that carry a potential penalty of death.
A federal grand jury indictment was unsealed Thursday against Patrick Crusius, 21, of Allen. The indictment comes six months after the Aug. 3 mass killing stunned the U.S., Mexico and this borderland region.
The indictment charges Crusius with 90 counts. The first 22 are hate crime resulting in death, for each person he killed; counts 23-44 are use of a firearm to commit murder during and in relation to a crime of violence; counts 45-67 are hate crime involving attempt to kill; and the remaining 22 counts are use of a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence.
The indictment, which lists the initials of each victim, says Crusius bought a GP WASR-10 semi-automatic rifle on the internet in June 2019. The weapon is a variant of the AK-47 assault rifle. He also bought 1,000 rounds of “hollow point” ammunition online, according to the indictment.
U.S. Attorney John F. Bash made the announcement with other top officials, including Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and FBI El Paso Division Special Agent in Charge Luis M. Quesada.
Federal and state authorities say Crusius drove some 800 miles overnight from North Texas to hunt down Mexicans. He turned himself in shortly after opening fire on shoppers at the Walmart here.
Crusius already faces state charges on one count of capital murder of multiple persons that claimed victims from both sides of the border. Eight of the victims were Mexican nationals.
Last October, Crusius entered a not guilty plea on state charges, although he had earlier confessed to police. El Paso prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. Crusius remains jailed without bond. A special hearing in the state case on the state case is scheduled for Feb. 13.
His first hearing in federal court is set for a day earlier at 10 a.m.
“We support the indictment by the U.S. Attorney’s Office as one more way of holding the shooter accountable,” District Attorney Jaime Esparza said in a statement. “The District Attorney’s Office will continue to work hard to ensure that justice is done and that the shooter is held accountable by our community. The office will fully cooperate with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the prosecution of the federal charges to be announced today.”
For the state trial, no trial date or decision on a potential change of venue have been decided. A change of trial location could cost taxpayers as much as $6 million, county officials have said.
Crusius has been determined indigent, meaning the county is paying for his defense in court. Joe A. Spencer, one of Crusius’ attorneys, did not immediately respond to questions.
The shooting was the deadliest attack on Latinos in modern U.S. history. After the shooting, investigators found a racist manifesto posted online that they say was written and uploaded to the internet by Crusius as he sat inside his car in the parking lot of the Walmart minutes before the shootings. The Walmart has long been a magnet for shoppers from both sides of the border.
In the manifesto, titled “The Inconvenient Truth,” he railed against the “Hispanic invasion of Texas.”
“They are the instigators, not me,” Crusius wrote, according to the indictment. “I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by the invasion.”
Many community leaders, among them U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Democrat whose district includes El Paso, have blamed political leaders, particularly President Donald J. Trump, for using inflammatory language against immigrants that allegedly helped inspired Crusius’ fears of ethnic replacement. In the manifesto, the author specifically says he developed his beliefs before Trump became president.
In her rebuttal speech following Tuesday’s State of the Union, Escobar tied the murders directly to Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, framing gun violence as a public health epidemic. During his address to the nation, Trump used the same kind of rhetoric, citing examples of undocumented migrants who had committed violent crimes in sanctuary cities, even though studies indicate that illegal immigration does not increase violent crime.
“Just before (the shooter) began his killing spree, he published his opinions on the Internet, and he used the same hateful words used by President Trump to describe immigrants and Latinos,” Escobar said. “Incidents of gun violence take place in our schools, places of worship and neighborhoods every single day.”
A Dallas Morning News poll this week found that Texans overwhelmingly support background checks before gun purchases and say state leaders are not doing enough to stop mass shootings.
The massacre galvanized leaders on both sides of the border to work toward healing emotional wounds through the power of art. Last month, the Dallas-based Credo Community Choir and the Esperanza Azteca Youth Orchestra spearheaded a binational music festival in El Paso and Ciudad Juarez aimed at bringing North Texas and people on both sides of the border closer together.
The town of San Elizario, just east of El Paso, planted 22 oak trees in honor of the victims.
But El Paso remains on edge. On Wednesday, the Cielo Vista Mall, adjacent to the Walmart, was placed on a temporary lockdown as El Paso police chased and caught multiple robbery suspects. Police later distanced themselves from the term “lockdown,” saying a preliminary report of a lockdown was “incorrect.”
Nonetheless, one Mexican shopper, Eduardo Macias, 31, from Chihuahua, Mexico, said, “We’re all trying to move forward, as if nothing happened, but what happened in El Paso is always on the back of our minds, especially in public areas.”
Source: postguam.com, Staff, February 9, 2020
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
