Texas gunman who killed 23 at El Paso Walmart set to plead guilty to murder
The long-running criminal case against a Texas gunman who killed 23 people in a racist attack targeting Hispanic shoppers at a Walmart in El Paso in 2019 is on the verge of coming to a close.Patrick Crusius, 26, is expected to plead guilty Monday to capital murder and receive a sentence of life in prison with no possibility of parole for the massacre near the US-Mexico border.El Paso County District Attorney James Montoya said last month he was offering Crusius a plea deal and that he wouldn’t face the death penalty on the state charge.Crusius has already been sentenced to 90 consecutive life sentences in federal court after pleading guilty in 2023 to hate crime and weapons charges.Under the Biden administration, federal prosecutors also took the death penalty off the table.Crusius is expected to serve his time in a state prison.Crusius initially was arrested by local authorities and will enter the custody of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice if he is sentenced on the state charges, a spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons said.Here’s what to know about the deadly attack on Aug.
3, 2019, and its aftermath:Crusius was 21 years old when authorities say he drove for more than 10 hours from his home in suburban Dallas to El Paso and opened fire at the Walmart, which is popular with shoppers from Mexico and the US.Prosecutors have said Crusius was wearing earmuffs that muted the sound of gunfire when he began shooting people in the parking lot.He then moved inside the store and continued firing an AK-style rifle, cornering shoppers at a bank near the entrance where nine were killed before shooting at the checkout area and people in aisles.Exiting Walmart, he fired on a passing car, killing an elderly man and wounding his wife.Crusius was apprehended shortly after and confessed to officers who stopped him at an intersection, according to police.In a posting to an online message board just before the massacre, Crusius, a white, community-college dropout...