Authorities in Texas are quizzing a 21-year-old white man - suspected of posting a racist “manifesto” online - believed to be responsible for a gun attack on a shopping centre that killed 20 people and which police said was the “nexus of a hate crime”, Independent reports.
Video phone footage taken inside a mall in El Paso showed people running in fear for their lives after the shooter entered a Walmart store with a semiautomatic weapon and opened fire. In addition to the 20 fatalities, at least two-dozen people were injured in the latest incident of gun violence to scar the nation.
It appears the suspected shooter - named by multiple media accounts as Patrick Crusius - drove up to ten hours from Alen, a town near Dallas, to target the store in El Paso, a city on the border with Mexico that has long been a home to immigrants. An online posting apparently written several days ago, said the attack was a response to the “Hispanic invasion of Texas”.
At a press conference, Texas governor Greg Abbot who has long been a supporter of gun rights and and an opponent of effort to regulate the sale or carrying of weapons, described the incident as one of the of the “deadliest days in history of Texas”.
On Twitter, he wrote: “Now in the beautiful city of El Paso. Texans grieve today for the people of this wonderful place. We ask God to bind up the wounds of all who’ve been harmed.”
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