El Paso shooting: One dead and three injured following incident at shopping mall

Abe Asher
·2 min read
156

One person is dead and at least three more are injured following a shooting at a shopping mall in El Paso on Wednesday evening.

Police in the West Texas city have taken one person into custody in connection with the shooting, but Sgt Robert Gomez said that law enforcement believe another person connected with the shooting may still be at large. He did not offer any information about a potential motive.

The Cielo Vista Mall is located in West El Paso just a half mile away from the site of a racially-motivated mass shooting in 2019 that killed 23 people and left 22 more injured.

Law enforcement officers were called to the mall just after 5pm in response to reports of a shooting in the mall’s food court and Dillard’s Department Store, KTSM reports. El Paso police have said that they will hold a second news briefing at 8pm local time.

“During this incident, it was chaotic,” Mr Gomez said. “People did flee. They were scared. There was shots fired in the mall, it does cause panic.”

According to KVIA, two of the victims taken to a local hospital were in critical condition. A family reception center has been set up in the main gymnasium at nearby Burges High School, which is where family members have been directed to go if they have been unable to make contact with a loved one.

Olivia Troye, a national security official who worked for former Vice President Mike Pence, tweeted that her aunt was hiding in the mall during the shooting.

“My aunt is currently in hiding at Cielo Vista Mall in El Paso, TX, as this active shooter scenario is still unfolding,” She survived the 2019 Wal-Mart El Paso shooting thanks to someone who pulled her to safety. What is it going to take to enact change?!”

The shooting is a traumatic reminder of the mass shooting at the Walmart in 2019, which was the deadliest attack on Latinos in recent US history. The perpetrator of the shooting, Patrick Wood Crusius, legally purchased a semiautomatic rifle and a thousand rounds of ammunition in June before driving from his home in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area to El Paso to commit the attack.

Crusius, a white nationalist, said that he targeted “Mexicans” during the shooting. He just plead guilty to 90 murder and hate crime charges in federal court last week and is awaiting sentencing.