El Paso shooter faces victims’ families at sentencing

Emotional testimony from survivors and victims’ families began Wednesday in the federal hearing on the conviction of the gunman who killed 23 people and injured dozens more at a Walmart store in El Paso, one of the deadliest attacks on Latinos in modern US history.

The shooter, Patrick Crusius, pleaded guilty to federal hate crime charges in February after federal prosecutors told the court they would not seek the death penalty. State authorities have made it clear they could prosecute it in a separate capital murder case that is still pending.

In the federal case, in which testimony about a possible sentence was expected to last at least two days, prosecutors agreed with the defense on a proposed sentence of 90 consecutive life sentences to reflect the 90 charges, including 45 hate crimes.

Emotions have remained raw in the four years since Mr. Crusius stormed a Walmart in the predominantly Latino frontier town, unleashing a fury of firepower just minutes after publishing a hate-filled manifesto online deploring the “Spanish invasion of Texas.”

Regularly drawing shoppers and workers from the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez just across the border, El Paso has long been seen as a haven for migrants from Mexico and other countries. Immigrants make up about a quarter of the population.

Relatives of the victims filled the courtroom in downtown El Paso on Wednesday and sobbed loudly as Mr. Crusius entered the room in a navy blue jumpsuit. He twirled idly in his chair as the magistrate, David Guaderama, read the charges on which he had been convicted, occasionally smiling or rolling his eyes as family members shared stories of grief and anger.

“Why are we in pain and you are not?” one of the survivors, Genesis Davila, told the gunman. She was raising money with her soccer team outside the Walmart when the attack occurred, injuring her mother and father and killing her coach. “Nobody invited you to our quiet town,” she said.

Prosecutors said Crusius, 24, who is white, drove 700 miles from his home in Allen, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, to the Walmart supercenter near a popular shopping mall. Armed with a semi-automatic rifle he bought online, the gunman chased shoppers and workers in the parking lot, down the aisles, and behind the cash registers.

In his anti-immigrant manifesto, Mr. Crusius made a claim, broadly endorsed by white supremacists, that elites in the United States and Europe are replacing white Europeans and their descendants with immigrants from countries with a non-white majority.

Mr Crusius told investigators he killed and wounded the people in the store because he believed they were of “Hispanic descent”, prosecutors said in describing a statement of facts in connection with the admission of guilt.

They said he told authorities he identified himself as a “white nationalist, motivated to kill Hispanics for immigrating to the United States.” He said he chose El Paso “to deter Mexican and other Hispanic immigrants from coming to the United States,” the statement said.

Prosecutors said the attacker appeared to be directly inspired by the March 2019 mass killing of Muslims at two mosques in New Zealand, an attack that killed 51 people.

Witnesses described how a barrage of fire filled the store with smoke as workers and customers, many of them covered in blood, ran for their lives. Mr. Crusius fled in his car, but surrendered moments later after being apprehended by a policeman and admitted, “I’m the shooter.”

The victims included an army veteran, a mother protecting her 2 month old son, a German citizen living on the Mexican side of the border, Mexican nationals and many others.

The defense has said it will issue its statements at the end of the victims’ presentations, possibly on Thursday.

In court on Wednesday, relatives of the victims came forward with a series of emotional impact statements, a combination of letters honoring the lives lost and angry statements directed at the shooter. Mr. Crusius sometimes moved his head and twirled in his chair, as if listening to a song only he could hear.

“They were happy people who didn’t bother anyone,” said Alfredo Hernandez, a relative of two of the victims, Maribel Loya and Leonardo Campos. “They woke up early that Saturday morning to get their dogs groomed, but little did they know they were going to be killed.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation brought in a certified emotional support dog, a sturdy black Labrador named Beaumont, to stand on stage with a young victim, Kaitlyn Melendez, who was 9 in 2019.

She said she and her grandparents stopped at the Walmart for candy and planned to go to a nearby movie theater from there.

Her grandfather, David Johnson, 63, died protecting her and her grandmother.

“You and your sick, confused brain. Do you know how pathetic you are?” Kaitlyn said, addressing the shooter. “I hope you get what you deserve. I was 9 years old when you took away my childhood; because of you, every person with a backpack that I see is a threat.”

At that moment, Mr. Crusius rolled his eyes, smiled, and shrugged.

“You can roll your eyes, smile and grin all you want,” Kaitlyn said. “I hope you rot out there.”

Kitty Bennett contributed research.