El Paso Walmart shooter who killed 23 in racist attack given 90 consecutive life sentences
Patrick Crusius, the white gunman who massacred 23 people inside a Texas Walmart in 2019, was sentenced Friday to 90 consecutive life sentences, some four years after he carried out the racist attack in the border city of El Paso.
Crusius, wearing a jumpsuit and shackles, remained mum and emotionless as U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama handed down his punishment. He recommended Crusius serve his time at a maximum-security prison in Colorado.
Just prior to the sentencing, Crusius’ attorney, Joe Spencer, requested the judge consider his client has a “broken brain.”
“Patrick’s thinking is at odds with reality,” Spencer said, adding that Crusius was “cemented in delusions.”
In February, Crusius pleaded guilty to nearly 90 federal charges, including 23 counts of hate crimes resulting in death, 23 counts of use of a firearm to commit murder during and in relation to a crime of violence, 22 counts of hate crimes involving an attempt to kill and 22 counts of use of a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence.
He agreed to the plea as part of a deal that allowed him to avoid the death penalty, though he could still be sentenced to death on pending state charges.
“We’ll be seeing you again, coward,” a family member of one of the victims shouted from the gallery as Crusius was led from the courtroom. “No apologies, no nothing.”
Since his sentencing hearing kicked off on Wednesday, Crusius has faced survivors in addition to dozens of loved ones and family of those killed in the gruesome attack.
Dean Reckard, the older brother of slain El Paso resident Margie Reckard, shook with emotion and wept as Crusius entered the courtroom in El Paso for the first time earlier this week.
Bertha Benavides also addressed Crusius. Her husband of 34 years, Arturo Benavides, was paying for his groceries when he was fatally struck in the gunfire.
“You left children without their parents, you left spouses without their spouses, and we still need them,” she said.
Crusius was 21 years old when he drove 10 hours from his home in a ritzy Dallas suburb to El Paso on Aug. 3, 2019. He used a Romanian derivative of the AK-47 rifle and hollow-point ammunition to gun down shoppers both in and outside a Walmart in the border city, most of them of Hispanic descent.
Before the massacre, he posted an online rant declaring his acts were “a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”
Crusius was apprehended shortly after the shooting and confessed to officers who stopped him at a nearby intersection.
With News Wire Services
