2019 El Paso Walmart shooting

• 1. Introduction

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  At 10:15 on the morning of the 3rd of August 2019, a young man sat in a parked car outside a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. He opened his laptop and visited the imageboard 8chan. There he started a thread with a two-word title, "ITS TIME". The man was 21-year-old Patrick Crusius, and the 2019 El Paso Walmart shooting was about to begin. The FBI investigated it as domestic terrorism and a hate crime. It has been described as the deadliest attack on Latinos in modern American history. This documentary asks what carried Crusius to that parking lot and what he wrote before he acted. It asks who was inside the store and how they survived or died. And it asks how courts, neighbors, politicians and governments on both sides of the border answered.

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• 2. The Drive and the Orange

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  Around midnight, Crusius left his grandparents' house in Allen, Texas, and set out for El Paso in his 2012 Honda Civic. The route ran 650 miles, and he drove it throughout the entire night. Twice he stopped for gas and energy drinks. He reached El Paso at around 8 in the morning. For roughly an hour he drove through the city with no clear target in mind. He pulled over at a pizzeria, found it closed, and left.

  By about 9 o'clock he had parked at the Walmart beside the Cielo Vista Mall, on the east side of the city. He walked through the store for half an hour, scouting the building. Then he went back to the car and waited a few minutes. He returned to the store to buy a single orange, ate it inside, and walked out to the car once more.

  His next visit to the back of the Civic came at 10:37. This time he opened the trunk.

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• 3. Inside the Walmart

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  From the trunk came a 7.62×39mm GP WASR-10, a semi-automatic civilian version of the AKM rifle. A minute after Crusius closed the trunk, he opened fire. His first victim was a woman pushing a shopping cart. He then shot at people near a fundraiser for the El Paso Fusion girls soccer team, just outside the store. In the parking lot alone he killed three people and wounded six. One of the three was a man who would die eight months later.

  The store manager saw the gunman firing in the lot before he came through the doors. He called a "Code Brown," which designates an active shooter, and employees began steering customers out or into hiding. About 3,000 people were in the mall complex that morning. Many customers and workers ran into neighboring stores. Others hid under tables or inside shipping containers behind the building.

  At 10:39, Crusius entered through the west entrance. An elderly man tried to run from him and was shot dead. Crusius turned right and walked east along the front of the store, firing as he went. He turned toward the First Convenience Bank inside the store and shot people in its lobby, killing nine. At the checkout lines he killed nine more. Then he broke off and sprinted for the eastern doors, reaching them at 10:41. Inside the building he had killed 19 people and injured 15.

  On his way out, he stopped to fire at a moving car in the parking lot, killing a man and wounding his wife. He shot no one else and walked back to his car, still holding the rifle. Investigators determined that he fired approximately 90 rounds or fewer and reloaded twice.

  Responders began arriving within six minutes of the first 9-1-1 call. El Paso police, Texas Rangers and paramedics came, along with the FBI and the ATF. Crusius drove to the intersection of Sunmount and Viscount and stopped in the left turn lane. He stepped out with his hands raised and told Texas Rangers and an El Paso motorcycle officer that he was the shooter. He was arrested and taken to police headquarters. There, detectives were about to hear whom he said he had come to find.

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• 4. Victims and Rescuers

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  Of the 45 people shot that morning, 23 died and 22 were injured. Twenty of the dead were pronounced dead at the scene. Another victim died the next day, and a second died two days after. A third died eight months later, on the 26th of April 2020. The dead included thirteen Americans, eight Mexicans and one German. El Paso police released the names, ages and citizenships of 22 of them on the 5th of August. Seventeen were 56 or older, two were in their 40s, two were in their 20s, one was 36 and one was 15.

  Thirteen victims were taken to the University Medical Center of El Paso, and another eleven went to Del Sol Medical Center. The patients at Del Sol were between 35 and 82 years old. Two children, aged 2 and 9, were moved to El Paso Children's Hospital once their conditions were stabilized.

  Glendon Oakley Jr. was born on the 16th of December 1996 and grew up in Killeen, Texas. The Army recruited him in Macon, Georgia, and he served as a private in the 1st Armored Division at Fort Bliss. He would be found dead in his quarters there on the 8th of April 2020. No cause of death was stated, but the possibility of foul play was denied.

  Oakley was off duty and shopping at a Foot Locker near the mall when he learned of the shooting. He later explained what he did: "I didn't even think. I just grabbed as many kids as I could and ran five stores down to the exit." El Paso police Chief Greg Allen praised him for saving many lives. When President Donald Trump visited the city, he met Oakley and remarked, "What a job he did."

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• 5. The Gunman and His Manifesto

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  Patrick Wood Crusius was born on the 27th of July 1998 and lived with his family in Allen, in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. He graduated from Plano Senior High School in 2017 and then enrolled at Collin College, where he stayed until the spring of 2019. After his arrest he was charged with capital murder.

  In June 2019, Crusius bought the rifle and 1,000 rounds of hollow-point ammunition online, and the purchase was legal. According to an arrest warrant affidavit, he told detectives in his first interrogation that he had targeted Mexicans. He had also been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder.

  Public records and social media showed something of his politics. Crusius registered to vote in 2016 as a Republican. A Twitter account from 2017 displayed a photo of Donald Trump in the Oval Office. He also had a pro-Trump poll with responses such as "#BuildTheWall, #NoSanctuaryCities, #KeepGitmoOpen and #BanSyrianRefugees".

  Five minutes after starting his thread on 8chan, Crusius uploaded a PDF titled The Inconvenient Truth, and he later admitted posting it. The manifesto carried white nationalist and anti-immigrant themes. It named as inspiration the Christchurch mosque shootings in New Zealand, which killed 51 people earlier that year, and it voiced support for the Christchurch gunman. It also leaned on the far-right conspiracy theory known as the Great Replacement. Among its grievances were environmental degradation, "cultural and ethnic replacement" and a "Hispanic invasion".

  Terrorism experts, including Peter R. Neumann, cited the Great Replacement as a common factor across several similar attacks. The Southern Poverty Law Center's Hatewatch blog linked the shooting to Christchurch and to the Poway synagogue shooting, citing similar white nationalist manifestos. Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, said the series of attacks showed a "global threat" of white supremacy. NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg urged countries to work together against "lone wolf" attackers who find inspiration in one another. The writer Daniel Okrent disputed that idea, arguing that technology lets people with similar violent ideologies gather online.

  Several commentators read the manifesto's environmental complaints as ecofascism. The Washington Post described El Paso and Christchurch as examples of an eco-fascist trend among white supremacists. In GQ, Luke Darby pointed to the "distinctly environmental theme" of the document. Jeet Heer, writing in The Nation, called its worldview "Malthusian fascism", in which races compete as environmental crises such as global warming grow. Mainstream environmentalists, including the executive director of the Sierra Club, denounced the attacker's alleged white-supremacist motivations.

  The journalist Robert Evans placed El Paso, Christchurch and Poway in a series of shootings driven by a "high score" culture that began with the Columbine High School massacre.

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• 6. Courtroom

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  The arrest warrant affidavit says Crusius waived his Miranda rights and confessed to detectives that he was the shooter. Several investigations and jurisdictions were involved. FBI officials in El Paso served multiple warrants in the Dallas area and interviewed acquaintances of Crusius in Dallas and San Antonio.

  On the 12th of September 2019, a Texas grand jury indicted Crusius on state capital murder charges. At his arraignment at the El Paso County Courthouse on the 10th of October 2019, he pleaded not guilty.

  On the 6th of February 2020, federal prosecutors charged him with 90 counts. There were 22 counts of committing a hate crime resulting in death and 22 counts of using a firearm to commit murder. There were also 23 counts of a hate crime involving an attempt to kill and 23 counts of using a firearm during a crime. On the 28th of April 2020, prosecutors sought a new capital murder charge after the death of a twenty-third victim.

  On the 30th of January 2021, a woman identified only as "Rosa" was deported over a minor traffic violation. She had offered to testify in the case.

  On the 8th of February 2023, Crusius pleaded guilty to 90 federal murder and hate crime charges. On the 7th of July 2023, he was sentenced to 90 consecutive life sentences. He pleaded guilty to the state charges on the 21st of April 2025 and received life in prison without parole. He is held at the Louis C. Powledge Unit in Palestine, Texas.

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• 7. Mourning and Memory

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  Several funeral homes in El Paso and Ciudad Juárez announced that they would serve the victims' families free of charge. In Ciudad Juárez, the local chapter of Rotary International organized a vigil at a park. People lit candles and shone cellphone lights toward El Paso.

  On the 16th of August, Antonio Basco declared his wife's funeral open to anyone who wished to attend. Hundreds came from El Paso and other parts of the country, and flowers arrived from around the world.

  On the 1st of September, the El Paso musician Khalid held a benefit concert for his home city with several high-profile artists. He was introduced by fellow El Paso native Beto O'Rourke, a former U.S. Representative.

  One week after the attack, Jorge Luis Martínez Chávez of Ciudad Juárez ran 22 miles, one for each person then counted among the dead. He started at the Zaragoza bridge in Mexico and finished at the Walmart memorial in El Paso. The El Paso Healing Garden at Ascarate Park in Mission Valley was dedicated in August 2021. It was designated a national memorial in December 2022.

  The shooting also reached film, books and poetry. On Guard: A Story of American Youth is a 2023 documentary directed by Allen Otto and executive produced by Jim Czarnecki. It follows an all-female color guard team at Bel Air High School as it prepares a performance dedicated to the victims for the 2020 WGI World Championships. Jorge Majfud wrote an extensive book prompted by the shooting, La frontera salvaje, published in 2021.

  The Cuban American poet Richard Blanco called the shooting a "catalyst" for his poem "The U.S. of Us", built from the text of "The Star-Spangled Banner". He said that "in the wake of the violence of the El Paso shooting, I felt an urgency to take a hard look at our place as Hispanics in the United States".

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• 8. Reaction at Home and Abroad

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  Later on the day of the attack, President Donald Trump called the shooting "hateful" and an "act of cowardice" and promised "total support". After the shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, he ordered all U.S. flags, at home and abroad, flown at half-staff until sunset on the 8th of August. On the 5th of August he spoke from the White House: "In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy. These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America." Two days later he said he was "concerned about the rise of any group of hate", naming white supremacy, any other kind of supremacy, and antifa.

  Within two days, #WhiteSupremacistInChief was the top trend on Twitter. Critics said the suspect's alleged manifesto echoed Trump's past remarks, including references to illegal immigration as an "invasion". Media outlets also revisited a May 2019 rally, where an audience member suggested shooting migrants crossing the border and Trump answered with a joke. Former president Barack Obama said: "We should soundly reject language coming out of the mouths of any of our leaders that feeds a climate of fear and hatred or normalizes racist sentiments." Many interpreted this as a criticism of Trump's rhetoric.

  Veronica Escobar, who represents El Paso in Congress, closed a town hall in the city early after the shooting. She later spoke of a hate epidemic and of domestic terrorism that results from dehumanizing others. Texas Governor Greg Abbott called the attack "a heinous and senseless act of violence". Senator Ted Cruz first deplored "this unspeakable evil" and later called it a "heinous act of terrorism and white supremacy". Senator John Cornyn said gun violence would not be solved by focusing on law-abiding citizens. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein used the words "white terrorism" on Twitter. Many Latinos told The New York Times they were disturbed to find themselves targets of white-nationalist violence.

  The debate turned to guns and to video games. Trump, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick suggested violent video games played a part. The video game industry objected, noting that past studies have found no such link. Democratic presidential candidates including Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Andrew Yang called for action on gun violence. That evening, Moms Demand Action, holding a convention in Washington, D.C., led a march and vigil outside the White House.

  Trump visited El Paso and Dayton on the 7th of August. Escobar had said he was "not welcome" and declined an invitation to meet him. Protesters gathered at the site of the shooting. The White House published photos and a video of the trip, and in some photos Trump smiled and gave thumbs up. He said he had an "amazing day".

  Two days after the shooting, a Walmart corporate employee sent a memorandum to the whole e-commerce division urging a "sick-out" strike to push the company to stop selling guns. Walmart then told workers to remove signs and displays with violent themes and pledged $400,000 to funds for the victims. On the 3rd of September, the company announced that it would stop selling ammunition for handguns and assault rifles in the United States. It also asked customers not to openly carry firearms into its stores.

  On 8chan, some users claimed the shooter was "our guy". After the manifesto was deleted, some re-uploaded it, while others called it fake or said it showed "zero effort". Cloudflare ended its security service for the site, saying "8chan has repeatedly proven itself to be a cesspool of hate". The site later went dark when its server provider, Voxility, discontinued its service.

  Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador sent condolences to American and Mexican families and criticized the "indiscriminate use of weapons" in the United States. The Mexican Secretariat of Foreign Affairs identified eight Mexican citizens killed and seven wounded. The dead came from Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua City, and Torreón, Coahuila. Consul Mauricio Ibarra Ponce de León coordinated consular help in El Paso. On the 4th of August, Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said Mexico could bring a terrorism charge against the suspect, a first for a crime committed in the United States. He added that Mexico might seek extradition and would press charges against whoever sold the weapons. Former president Felipe Calderón urged Trump to stop his "hate speech" and "stigmatization".

  UN Secretary-General António Guterres condemned "in the strongest terms the terrorist attack against Latinos on Saturday in the Texas city of El Paso". Pope Francis spoke of the attacks on the 4th of August in St. Peter's Square, saying they had "bloodied Texas, California, and Ohio". The Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting in California had happened about a week before, and the Dayton shooting came less than 24 hours after. Uruguay and Venezuela issued travel warnings about certain American cities, and Japan warned its citizens about gunfire "everywhere" in the country. Trump threatened undefined retaliation against countries that issued such warnings.

  Even Hollywood felt the aftershock. Universal Pictures suspended marketing for its action horror film The Hunt a few days after both shootings. On the 10th of August it pulled the film from its release date of the 27th of September. On the 11th of February 2020, Universal rescheduled it for the 13th of March 2020.

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