The Texas gunman who killed 23 people in a 2019 attack targeting Hispanic shoppers at an El Paso Walmart is set to plead guilty to murder charges, finally allowing the case to come to a close.
Patrick Crusius, 26, is expected to plead guilty on Monday to capital murder and receive a sentence of life in prison with no possibility of parole for the racist mass shooting near the U.S.-Mexico border on Aug. 3, 2019. El Paso County District Attorney James Montoya, a Democrat, said last month he was offering Crusius a plea deal to avoid the death penalty on the state charge.
Crusius was already sentenced to 90 consecutive life sentences in federal court after pleading guilty to hate crime and weapons charges in 2023. Federal prosecutors under the Biden administration also took the death penalty off the table.
The gunman is expected to serve his time in a Texas state prison. Crusius was initially arrested by local authorities and will be transferred to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice if he is sentenced on state charges, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
EL PASO WALMART SHOOTER GETS 90 LIFE SENTENCES FOR ATTACK THAT KILLED 23
Crusius was 21 years old when authorities say he drove more than 10 hours from his home in suburban Dallas to El Paso and opened fire at the Walmart.
Prosecutors have said Crusius was wearing earmuffs to mute the sound of gunfire when he began firing his AK-style rifle in the store’s parking lot. He then moved inside the store and continued firing, cornering shoppers at a bank near the entrance where nine were killed, before firing at people who were at the checkout area and in the aisles.
As he left the store, he shot at a passing car, killing an elderly man and wounding his wife.
Crusius was taken into custody a short time later and confessed to the shooting to officers.
In a posting to an online message board ahead of the shooting, Crusius, who is white, said the massacre was “in response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.” He also claimed Hispanics were going to take over the government and economy.
‘INVASION’ LANGUAGE CONTINUES AFTER EL PASO WALMART SHOOTING
His social media posts included rhetoric about the national immigration debate. He expressed support for President Donald Trump’s policies tackling immigration, including the president’s plan to construct a wall on the Southern Border. The Republican president was in his first term at the time.
After the shooting, Crusius told officers that he was targeting Mexicans.
The people who were killed in the shooting ranged in age from a 15-year-old to grandparents. The victims included immigrants and Mexican nationals who had crossed the U.S. border on routine shopping trips.
“Racism is something I always wanted to think didn’t exist. Obviously, it does,” Jessica Coca Garcia, who suffered leg wounds but recovered, said in a speech across the road from the county jail where Crusius was being held a week after the shooting. Her husband was killed in the incident.
Attorney Joe Spencer, who represents Crusius, described Crusius on Thursday as “an individual with a broken brain.” Spencer said Crusius had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, which can include hallucinations, delusions and mood swings.
Montoya said he offered the plea deal because most victims’ relatives were eager for the case to conclude, although he acknowledged not all the families agreed. He said he supports the death penalty and believes Crusius deserves it but that the case might not have gone to trial until 2028 if his office had continued to pursue the death penalty.
When he took office in January, Montoya became the fourth district attorney to oversee the case in nearly six years. One of his predecessors resigned in 2022 under pressure over her handling of the case. Montoya said the COVID-19 pandemic also caused delays in wrapping up the case.
Stephanie Melendez, whose father David Johnson died shielding his wife and granddaughter, said she initially wanted Crusius to receive the death penalty before later just wanting the case to end as it continued to drag on.
“I just wanted it to be over,” Melendez said. “I was done reliving everything. I was done going to court for hours. I was done with the briefings that happened after that would last hours and it was just the same talk over and over again. We were just ready to be done with it all because, honestly, it’s like reliving the trauma over and over again.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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