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Eugene

(61,872 posts)
Thu Feb 6, 2020, 10:00 PM Feb 2020

Texas man accused in El Paso mass shooting charged with federal hate crime

Source: The Guardian and agencies

Texas man accused in El Paso mass shooting charged with federal hate crime

• Patrick Crusius has pleaded not guilty to capital murder
• He killed 22 people in August at a Walmart store


Staff and agencies
Thu 6 Feb 2020 22.23 GMT
Last modified on Fri 7 Feb 2020 00.21 GMT

The man accused of killing 22 people and wounding two dozen more in a shooting that targeted Mexicans in the border city of El Paso, Texas, has been charged with federal hate crimes.

Patrick Crusius, 21, has been charged with 90 counts under federal hate crime and firearms laws for his role in the 3 August shooting that authorities said was aimed at scaring Mexicans into leaving the United States, according to an indictment unsealed Thursday.

Federal prosecutors were expected to announce the charges later Thursday at a news conference in El Paso. Crusius, of Allen, Texas, is facing the death penalty on a state capital murder charge. He pleaded not guilty last year.

The shooting came amid a political battle over the treatment of an influx of migrants at the US-Mexico border. Donald Trump has made cracking down on immigration a hallmark of his administration and El Paso, a border city in southern Texas, has often been a target of the administration’s ire. Trump’s former attorney general once said El Paso was “ground zero” and the “frontlines” for border conflicts.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/06/el-paso-walmart-shooting-hate-crime
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