90 life sentences for US gunman who targeted Hispanics in Texas
People arrive at MacArthur Elementary looking for family and friends as the school is being used a re-unification center during the aftermath of a shooting at the Walmart near the Cielo Vista Mall, Saturday, Aug. 3, 2019 in El Paso, Texas. Multiple people were killed and one person was in custody after a shooter went on a rampage at a shopping mall, police in the Texas border town of El Paso said. (Briana Sanchez/The El Paso Times via AP)
Houston, United States — A young white nationalist who shot and killed 23 people at a supermarket in the majority-Hispanic Texas city of El Paso in 2019 was sentenced to 90 consecutive life sentences in prison on Friday.
Patrick Crusius, 24, pleaded guilty in February to federal hate crime charges in connection with the August 3, 2019 mass shooting at an El Paso Walmart.
Crusius still faces trial at the state level in Texas, which has not ruled out seeking the death penalty.
Crusius drove some 660 miles (1,060 kilometers) from Allen, Texas, near Dallas to the Walmart Supercenter in El Paso with an AK-47-style assault rifle and 1,000 rounds of ammunition.
He opened fire on people in the supermarket parking lot, killing 23 and wounding 22.
According to the federal indictment, before Crusius launched his attack he uploaded a document to the internet titled “The Inconvenient Truth” in which he said his attack “is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”
He said he was “defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement,” referring to a concept by white supremacists claiming other ethnic groups are “replacing” them in the population.
When police showed up he got out of his car and identified himself as the shooter. While in custody Crusius told police he wanted to kill “Mexicans.”
The massacre ignited a debate on how then-president Donald Trump’s repeated criticism of immigrants influenced the behavior of people who supported him.
Crusius’s attack was the fifth deadliest mass shooting in US history.
It came two years after a gunman killed 58 at an outdoor concert in Las Vegas and three years after a man murdered 49 at an LGBTQ nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
RELATED STORY:
Mass shootings have Latinos worried about being targets
