Quiet Texas neighborhood stunned by connection to El Paso shooting suspect

ALLEN, Texas – When the FBI cleared the scene of the home in this upscale Dallas suburb just after 8 a.m. Sunday, local police had a terse but polite message for the small army of reporters cordoned off about a block away: You can do your job, but if you harass the family inside be prepared to deal with law enforcement.

"They're going to call the police if that happens and we're going to have to come back out and make contact," said Lt. Kris Wirstrom of the Allen Police Department. "You know I don't want to do that."

The home is listed as the last known address for Patrick Wood Crusius, the 21-year-old white man taken into custody after a massacre at an El Paso mall and shopping complex that left at least 20 dead and more than two dozen injured in the heavily Hispanic area.

The death toll in the El Paso shooting increased to 22 on Monday, officials said. There are now 24 wounded.

The two-story masonry-sided home on a cul-de-sac sits in a parkside neighborhood called Star Creek with manicured Bermuda grass lawns. Neighbors have access to a community swimming pool and a paved hiking and jogging trail that weaves between mature oaks and pecan trees.

Stephanie Ward was one of several Star Creek neighbors who strolled or bicycled by or sought to avoid the reporters and TV cameras on their morning walk on a cool and overcast Sunday.

"I am in shock," said Ward, who has lived in Star Creek about six years. "It’s scary to know I could live so close to someone with so much hate in his heart.”

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Ward said she does not know the family in the home from where law enforcement officers were seen taking boxes and loading them into a large black tactical vehicle.

"It makes me wonder," she said. "I don’t think hate grows on its own. What’s he been reading? What’s he been watching on TV?”

Daniel Heo, a childhood friend of the suspect, told the USA TODAY Network in a text that he was stunned when he heard the reports from El Paso.

"I knew him in elementary school and I would always play basketball or soccer with him at recess and he was such a bright kid," recalled Heo. "He was so nice. I moved away after fifth grade and lost contact with him, and he moved in high school to my high school and he was such a different person.

"He was like a loner and kept to himself a lot," he continued. "I never knew he would do such a thing."

Records show Crusius attended classes about six miles from Star Creek at a campus of Collin College, a two-year community college.

Chris Vasquez, who leads the college's chapter of Students Demand Action, a gun safety group, said reports that the suspect also was enrolled at the college sent shivers.

"I'm a 19-year-old Hispanic man. I'm the perfect definition of someone he might come after," said Vasquez, who hopes to study law after completing undergraduate work. "He could have targeted me.

"We have events on campus, we set up booths," he added. "He could have come to one of our meetings and started shooting."

Vasquez said gun violence is not theoretical to people in his age group. His teenage years are scarred with the memories of one mass shooting after another. He ticked them off: Parkland High School in Florida, 17 dead; Sutherland Springs, Texas, 26 dead, plus an unborn child; Santa Fe High School, 10 dead.

"This keeps happening and our (elected) representatives do nothing," Vasquez said.

The tax-supported college district issued a statement about the suspect, who attended classes from 2017 until spring 2019, and the events in El Paso.

"We are saddened and horrified by the news of the shooting today in El Paso, Texas. A student by the name of Patrick Crusius attended Collin College from fall 2017 through spring 2019.

"Collin College is prepared to cooperate fully with state and federal authorities in their investigation of this senseless tragedy," the statement continued. "We join the governor and all Texans in expressing our heartfelt concern for the victims of the shooting and their loved ones."

Follow John C. Moritz on Twitter: @JohnnieMo

This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: El Paso shooting: Neighborhood residents stunned by link to suspect