28-year-old dies in shooting outside Northeast Austin Walmart; suspects at large, police say
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified the victim of Wednesday's shooting.
Police have identified a 28-year-old man who was killed in the parking lot of a Walmart store in Northeast Austin last week.
Police responded to the shooting Wednesday night at the Walmart at 1030 Norwood Park Blvd., near East Anderson Lane, around 10:39 p.m. after a bystander called to say that a man had been shot. The call came just minutes before the store would close for the Thanksgiving holiday.
When police arrived at the store, they found a man, who has been identified as Jose Juan Vasquez, with several gunshot wounds. Police officers tried to medically treat the man until Austin-Travis County EMS medics arrived. The man was taken to a nearby hospital where he later died, police said.
Officer Juan Asencio, an Austin police spokesperson, said that the shooting is under investigation, and that detectives were interviewing witnesses and sifting through video footage from the Walmart security cameras.
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Police have not yet determined what sparked the shooting. Multiple suspects are believed to be involved and are still at-large, police said.
“The shooting did happen in the parking lot of the Walmart and not inside,” Asencio said. “But right now, we don’t have great descriptions. But we know there was multiple suspects.”
Wednesday’s deadly shooting is Austin police’s 84th homicide case of 2021, further adding to record number of killings. Austin’s previous record for homicides in a single year was 59 in 1984.
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While the number of deaths have increased, Austin's homicide rate was much higher in the 1980s than what it is today. The rate was 13.2 per 100,000 back then, compared to 8.7, which is the current rate as of Mo.
Austin police records go as far back as 1960 and, since that year, the city had averaged 36 homicides a year.
Austin's spike in homicides is part of a national trend, which many criminologists attribute to a rising proliferation of guns and instability caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The coronavirus has exacerbated economic disparities, such as poverty and unemployment, which experts believe can drive people into crime.
The 84 homicides mark a 75% increase in homicides so far in 2021, compared with all of 2020 when the Police Department logged 48 violent deaths.
Austin police are asking anyone with more information about Wednesday's case to call their homicide tip line at 512-477-3588. Callers may remain anonymous. Information leading to an arrest may be eligible for a reward of up to $1,000.
Statesman reporter Heather Osbourne contributed to this article.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Shooting at Northeast Austin Walmart is city's 84th homicide
