EL PASO - A Texas grand jury on Thursday indicted
a man accused of killing 22 people in an August shooting at
Walmart in El Paso, Texas, who had told authorities he was
targeting Mexicans, local media reported.
Patrick Crusius, 21, was indicted on capital murder charges
and will face the death penalty if he is convicted, El Paso
County District Attorney Jaime Esparza said on Thursday, the El
Paso Times reported.
Crusius is accused of driving from the Dallas area to El
Paso on August 3 and firing at shoppers with a rifle inside a
Walmart store, after which he surrendered to officers who
confronted him outside the store.
Crusius confessed while surrendering and told police he was
targeting “Mexicans,” according to an El Paso police affidavit
released days after the shooting.
The Texas killings were followed just 13 hours later by
another mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio, where a gunman in body
armor and a mask killed nine people in less than a minute and
wounded 27 others in the city’s downtown historic district
before he was shot dead by police.
The shootings reverberated across the political arena on
Sunday as Democratic presidential candidates called for stricter
gun laws and accused President Donald Trump of stoking racial
tensions.