Shooting in El Paso, US, kills 20, injures 26 at a Walmart store

BY Libyan Express Aug 04, 2019 - 10:53

The shooter was using a rifle at a Walmart store. [Photo: Internet]

A gunman with an an assault-style rifle opened fire at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, killing 20 people and wounding 26 others as panicked shoppers and employees fled for cover before the gunman surrendered to police at the scene.

Many shoppers in the busy store were buying back-to-school supplies when they became caught up in the latest mass shooting to rock the US, just six days after a teenage gunman killed three people at a summer food festival in Northern California.

The attack at Walmart, which police said may have been racially motivated, was the eighth deadliest mass shooting in US history.

It rocked the majority-Hispanic El Paso community of over 800,000 people along the US-Mexico border, which prides itself as being one of the safest cities in America.

Saturday’s suspect was officially identified as a 21-year-old white male from Allen, Texas, a Dallas suburb some 1,046 kilometres east of El Paso, which lies along the Rio Grande, across the US-Mexico border from Ciudad Juarez.

Citing law enforcement officials, multiple news media reports named the suspect as Patrick Crusius.

El Paso police chief Greg Allen said authorities were examining a manifesto from the suspect indicating “there is a potential nexus to a hate crime”. Officials declined to elaborate and said the investigation was continuing.

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