Good morning.
The victims of a mass shooting have been named as law enforcement officials in Allen, Texas, are still trying to piece together the events of the Saturday afternoon attack at a suburban shopping mall in which a gunman killed eight people and injured seven others, before being killed himself by police.
Brian Harvey, the Allen police chief, declined to answer questions on Sunday evening, saying of the investigation, “we actually don’t have a lot”.
Authorities have yet to provide details about the exact series of events and publicly release the identities of the victims, but families, friends and organizations have released some information. Those killed include an engineer from India, a security guard, a Korean American family and two young children.
Cox elementary school students Daniela and Sofia Mendoza, grades four and two, were among those killed on Saturday at Allen Premium Outlets, according to officials in the Wylie independent school district. They were remembered as “the kindest, most thoughtful students with smiles that could light up any room”, school principal, Krista Wilson, said in a letter to parents.
What have investigators found out since the attack? Investigators determined 33-year-old Mauricio Garcia shot eight people to death and wounded seven others outside the mall in Allen. A police officer who had gone to the mall on an unrelated call fatally shot the attacker, and a law enforcement official later told the Associated Press that Garcia had expressed an interest in white supremacist beliefs before carrying out the mass murder.
Who were the other victims? Here’s what we know so far.
‘Gun-loving’ ex-US army officer calls for gun control after witnessing Texas mall shooting
As an ex-police and US army officer, Steven Spainhouer is comfortable around firearms and goes so far as to describe himself as a “gun lover”.
But Spainhouer is now passionately arguing in favor of meaningful gun control after witnessing a rifle-wielding man murder several people before being shot to death by police outside a suburban Dallas shopping mall on Saturday.
“We need some action in our legislatures at the federal and state level for better gun control,” he said in an interview with MSNBC a day after the mass killing outside Premium Outlets in Allen, Texas. “And I’m saying that as someone who loves guns.”
Spainhouer described rushing to the shopping center after his son called him saying he had heard gunfire. He arrived before emergency responders and performed CPR on some of those who had been felled by bullets.
In a separate interview with CBS, Spainhouer recounted the horrors he saw first-hand. “The first girl I walked up to was crouched down covering her head in the bushes,” he told CBS. “So I felt for a pulse, pulled her head to the side and she had no face.”
What’s Allen like? Thirty years ago, Allen had fewer than 22,000 residents. Today, it’s home to nearly 107,000 people, part of a huge economic boom in the region. In towns like Allen, guns are handed down from generation to generation and are as much a part of an individual’s identity as any other cultural touchstone.
Disney v DeSantis: what’s at stake for Florida as legal tug-of-war ramps up?
Lucy Mends was very nervous about vacationing at Disney World in central Florida this spring. From her home in Elkridge, Maryland, the 46-year-old romance novelist had read about a law approved by Governor Ron DeSantis in 2022 that banned discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in public school classrooms for children between kindergarten and the third grade.
Mends became more alarmed over a series of bills introduced during the current session of the state legislature that would extend that ban to include high school students and prohibit transgender people from amending their birth certificates and receiving transition-related care such as hormone therapy and puberty blockers for minors. “They’re demonizing trans people, and it’s very scary,” she said.
Under pressure from its employees, the Walt Disney Company publicly opposed the so-called Don’t Say Gay law last year. An angry DeSantis retaliated by denouncing Disney as the “Magic Kingdom of woke corporatism” and signed a bill in February aimed at seizing control of the self-governing special district near Orlando that the corporation has been running ever since Disney World opened its doors in 1972.
The eventual outcome of the legal tug-of-war between DeSantis, who is widely expected to formally announce in the coming weeks whether he will seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, and Disney will have profound implications for the Sunshine state overall and the regional economy of central Florida in particular.
What has DeSantis said about Disney? In his recently published book The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival, the governor blasted Disney for its supposed “support of indoctrinating young schoolchildren in woke gender identity politics” and boasted about how “things got worse for Disney” during DeSantis’s stewardship.
In other news …
Jurors will begin deliberating in a civil trial on Tuesday to decide whether Donald Trump raped writer E Jean Carroll more than two decades ago and then defamed her by claiming she made up the story.
North Dakota’s governor has signed a bill into law that allows public school teachers and state government employees to ignore the pronouns their transgender students and colleagues use, the governor’s office announced on Monday.
Vladimir Putin said a “real war” was again being waged against Russia, as he invoked the Soviet Union’s victory in the second world war to say the west was trying to destroy his country. In a speech on Red Square as part of Russia’s Victory Day celebrations, Putin said Russia wanted to see a peaceful future.
An SUV driver who killed eight people when he slammed into a group waiting at a bus stop in Brownsville, Texas, was charged with manslaughter, police said yesterday as investigators tried to determine if the crash was intentional. George Alvarez, 34 plowed into a crowd outside a migrant center on Sunday.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has warned that artificial intelligence could be used by “bad actors” and make it harder to spot scams and misinformation. Wozniak, who was one of Apple’s co-founders with the late Steve Jobs said AI content should be clearly labelled, and called for regulation for the sector.
Israel has killed three senior Islamic Jihad commanders in airstrikes on the Gaza Strip that Palestinian officials said also killed at least nine civilians, including four children. The airstrikes were the latest incident in more than a year of surging violence that has seen repeated Israeli military raids.
Stat of the day: US on track to set record in 2023 for mass killings after series of shootings
After a series of shootings and other attacks, 2023 is on track to be the worst in recent history for mass killings in the US. Mass killings are defined as incidents in which four or more people are killed, not including the shooter or other type of perpetrator. According to data from the Gun Violence Archive, the US is on pace for 60 mass killings this year. There were 31 in 2019, 21 in 2020, 28 in 2021 and 36 in 2022. The US is seeing on average more than one mass killing weekly. As of 7 May 2023, there had been 202 mass shootings – defined by the archive as involving at least four people killed or injured by firearms, excluding the shooter – since the beginning of the year. The incidents have spanned the country, from Chicago to Mississippi and Tennessee to Texas. They have occurred at shopping malls, schools and parties and in countless neighborhoods.
Don’t miss this: struck by lightning, my face burned and my memory disappeared. Here is how I made it back
It was mid-afternoon, on a July day in 2005. Knudsen was standing outside on his ranch with his wife and baby daughter. In the distance there was a thunderstorm – he could see the rain clouds, 15 or so miles away – but where they stood there were blue-skies and calm. Several of their horses were out to pasture; there were chickens around, pecking at the dirt. His wife handed the baby to Knudsen to hold. Suddenly, a lightning bolt struck Knudsen, entering through his head and exiting through his left hand. He remembers bright light and “the loudest noise”. The horses ran for cover, while pipes that had been buried deep underground lurched to the surface. In their home, 300 yards (275 metres) from where they stood, the television blew out. Then, just as abruptly, the chaos passed. Here he reflects on the challenging, laughter-filled path to reclaiming his health and identity.
Climate check: ‘mind-boggling’ methane emissions from Turkmenistan revealed
Methane leaks alone from Turkmenistan’s two main fossil fuel fields caused more global heating in 2022 than the entire carbon emissions of the UK, satellite data has revealed. Emissions of the potent greenhouse gas from the oil- and gas-rich country are “mind-boggling”, and an “infuriating” problem that should be easy to fix, experts have told the Guardian. The data produced by Kayrros for the Guardian found that the western fossil fuel field in Turkmenistan, on the Caspian coast, leaked 2.6m tonnes of methane in 2022. The eastern field emitted 1.8m tonnes. Together, the two fields released emissions equivalent to 366m tonnes of CO2, more than the UK’s annual emissions, which are the 17th-biggest in the world. Methane emissions have surged alarmingly since 2007 and this acceleration may be the biggest threat to keeping below 1.5C of global heating, according to scientists.
Last Thing: I bought an urn for $30 to put my dad’s ashes in, but had to remove the original inhabitant first
“I bought a brass urn for my dad’s ashes eight years after he died,” writes Amber Cunningham. “I had looked online for proper urns but they were hundreds of dollars. Imagine my delight when I found one at a junk shop for 30 bucks. As I went to leave the shop and picked it up off the counter it was heavier than anticipated. I looked at the woman who had just sold it to me and she said: “I think there’s someone still in here.” In the coming weeks I tried to come to grips with what it meant that a whole person’s remains had not only been abandoned at a junk shop. I wondered if Dad wouldn’t mind a roomie, to share the urn. I then thought about scattering her (having decided she was a she) in the ocean but was worried she might hate that. Cold and wet, dark at night, sharks. In the end, I decided to keep her with me, in my garden under a Lilly Pilly hedge.”
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