Editor’s note: This story contains explicit language.
EL PASO — Patrick Wood Crusius is scheduled to be sentenced to life in prison in federal court in the coming days, nearly four years after he drove from a Dallas suburb to El Paso and opened fire at a busy Walmart — where he said he “wanted to shoot as many Mexicans as possible” — killing 23 people.
The 24-year-old Allen resident has been in custody since the Aug. 3, 2019, shooting and pleaded guilty earlier this year. As part of a plea agreement, he is expected to be sentenced to 90 consecutive life sentences after the U.S. Department of Justice decided not to seek the death penalty.
The 23 victims who died and 22 other people injured were mostly Mexican Americans and Mexican nationals from El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. It is common for residents of both cities to travel daily back and forth for work, school, visiting family and shopping.
A federal superseding indictment issued on July 9, 2020, charged the gunman with 90 counts, including hate crime resulting in death, hate crime involving attempt to kill and use of a firearm to commit murder.
According to that indictment, the gunman uploaded to the internet a document he wrote titled “The Inconvenient Truth,” in which he explained why he committed the shooting: “This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas. They are the instigators, not me. I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by the invasion.”
Before and after the mass shooting in El Paso, some Texas politicians have described the growing number of migrants arriving at the Texas-Mexico border — many of them asylum-seekers fleeing violence and harsh poverty in Central and South America — as an “invasion.” The “ethnic replacement” the gunman wrote about in the documents comes from a debunked conspiracy theory that people of color and immigrants are looking to replace white Americans.
Crusius still faces state charges in the shooting. State prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
The sentencing phase of the federal case started at 9 a.m. local time Wednesday in U.S. District Judge David C. Guaderrama’s courtroom.
On Wednesday and Thursday, the gunman heard from more than 30 relatives of people he killed. Some of the relatives’ statements were read on their behalf by prosecutors. Some of them referred to the shooter as an “evil parasite” and a “monster.” Some wished him to rot in his prison cell.
The gunman, who was sitting next to his team of lawyers, was shackled, wearing a navy blue jail jumpsuit and thin-rimmed glasses. As some victims’ relatives addressed him, the gunman, who has long, wavy brown hair, nodded his head back and forth.
Sentencing has been scheduled for 10 a.m. local time Friday. The gunman is not expected to make a statement.
Andre and Jordan Anchondo
Andre Anchondo, 23, was killed along with his wife, Jordan Anchondo, 24, as they saved their newborn baby, Paul.
Deborah Anchondo, Andre’s sister, read a letter on behalf of her nephew, Paul, who was 2 months old at the time of the shooting. He said he misses his father.
Gilberto “Tito” Anchondo said that after his brother was killed, their father was full of heartache. The patriarch of the family, who has since died, told his family that he had forgiven the shooter for killing his youngest son.
“Our father said, ‘I forgive him, but I won’t forgive the devil inside him,’” Gilberto “Tito” Anchondo said in court.
Maribel Hernandez Loya and Leonardo Campos
Maribel Hernandez Loya, 56, and her husband, Leonardo Campos, 41, were both killed in the shooting. Hernandez’s son told the gunman that he has had a hard time moving on in life since the shooting.
“I’ve tried so bad to forget what you’ve done. I hope God can one day forgive you,” Raul Loya said, later adding, “I hope you really think about what you’ve done.”
Alfredo Hernandez, Maribel Hernandez’s brother, said he is filled with sadness because he “can’t celebrate holidays” with his sister and brother-in-law.
He also said that his sense of security is gone anytime he goes out in public because he has to be “on the lookout for other psychos like you.”
“I hate that you’re alive, eating and sleeping. I wish you all the sadness in the world,” Alfredo Hernandez said.
David Johnson
Several relatives of David Johnson, 63, spoke, telling the gunman that his act of violence caused lifelong fear and trauma in their family.
Johnson’s daughter, Stephanie Melendez, said she’s waited for the moment to tell Crusius how she’s felt. But when she got the chance Wednesday, she said she struggled to articulate the pain of losing her father.
“In your act of hatred, you took a good man,” she said.
Melendez’s daughter was also at the Walmart with her grandparents. She survived the shooting. The family has said Johnson saved his wife and granddaughter from the shooter by hiding them under a checkout station and shielding them.
Melendez said the shooting has since shaped her then-9-year-old daughter’s life.
“You showed her evil, you showed her monsters do exist outside of storybooks,” she said. “I want you to remember my daughter’s cries. I want them to haunt you.”
Kaitlyn Melendez, Stephanie Melendez’s daughter, told the gunman, “I shall not ever forgive you.”
Raymond Attaguile, Johnson’s brother-in-law, criticized the gunman’s upbringing, saying his parents should be ashamed of him.
“I don’t know what kind of people raised you to be this kind of person,” he said. “Shame on your parents.”
Kathleen Johnson, David Johnson’s wife, told the gunman he killed the family’s provider and protector.
“I’ve had countless hours of counseling to deal with my PTSD. I don’t know if I’ll be the same, if that’s possible,” she said. “I have to remind myself every day that I’m safe from this killer. There are days when I can’t get out of bed.”
She also told Crusius that he didn’t take “the memories and joy” David Johnson brought her while he was alive.
Alexander Gerhard Hoffmann
Alexander Gerhard Hoffmann, 66, was also among the victims in 2019. He was originally from Germany but moved to Mexico in the ’80s, according to his son and daughter, who spoke at the hearing. He was living in Ciudad Juárez when he was killed but had planned to make the trip back to Germany to retire there.
Hoffman was in the German air force and had been stationed at Fort Bliss in El Paso when he met his wife, his family told The New York Times. The couple had three children and lived in Europe before settling in Juárez, where Hoffman worked as an engineer.
“You’re an evil parasite,” the couple’s son, Thomas Hoffman, told the gunman Wednesday.
Thomas Hoffman said the shooter had broken up his family. He said his father and mother had been together for more than 40 years.
“You killed my father in such a cowardly way. We were a small but happy family,” he said.
His father would routinely cross the bridge into El Paso to buy tools and furniture. Thomas Hoffman told Crusius he was ignorant for not knowing that immigrants bring jobs and spend money.
“I hope that every night you think about the people you shot and you can’t fall asleep,” he said. “You’re a coward, you’re a mistake of society.”
Elise Hoffmann-Taus said her father loved watching James Bond and Star Trek movies. She also said her father wanted his children to be engineers, like him. He died not knowing that his grandson has decided to pursue an engineering degree after high school.
“The killer robbed us all, robbed us all of the opportunity to see my father,” she said.
Arturo Benavides
Bertha Patricia Benavides spoke about life after the death of her husband, Arturo Benavides, 60, an Army veteran and retired city bus driver. She said they had been married 34 years and didn’t have children.
“You left me all by myself,” Bertha Benavides said, pointing at the gunman and immediately wiping tears away. “I’ll never get over it.”
She said she has fallen into a depression because she misses her husband every day.
“I just have one question: Why did you do it?” she said. “Then I answer my own question. It’s because you don’t know the Lord, you’ve never gotten close to the Lord.”
Shooting survivors struggle to cope
Two teenage girls who were in front of the Walmart fundraising on the day of the shooting described how much it has traumatized them. They’ve spent years that were supposed to be filled with fun and happiness learning coping skills to help with their depression, anxiety and stress.
Jocelyn Atilano, who is now 17, said she lost a cousin in the shooting. She returned to school two weeks after the shooting. Initially, the principal let Atilano eat her lunch in a counselor’s office, away from her peers in the cafeteria. When she thought she was ready to join her peers, she had a panic attack during lunch, she said.
From the witness stand, facing the audience in the courtroom instead of reading from a podium facing the gunman like the other victims, she said she used to be happy “until a coward chose to use violence against the innocent.”
“I would have nightmares that the shooter would come to my house and kill me,” she said.
Her teammate, Genesis Davila, who is now 16, said that she remembers the last hug from Guillermo “Memo” Garcia, one of her coaches who was killed in the shooting.
Davila’s father was shot in the leg but survived, she said.
“I want you dead,” she said, staring Crusius down. “I hate you so much.”
Christopher Morales
As Crusius’ sentencing hearing resumed on Thursday, he again wore a navy blue jumpsuit and was shackled, his long hair unkempt. At the start of the hearing, he cleaned his glasses and adjusted them on the bridge of his nose. Then the victim impact statements resumed.
Some family members addressed him directly, demanding that he give some reaction to their questions.
Christopher Morales said that on the day he purchased a ticket to fly from Las Vegas, where he lives, to visit his family in El Paso the day that his mother and aunt were wounded in the Walmart shooting. His 82-year-old grandmother, Teresa Sanchez, was killed.
He said he called his mother and her voice sounded low when she answered. His mother told him she’d been shot and was in an ambulance with a first responder holding her cellphone to her ear.
Addressing the gunman, Morales said the shooter still gets to eat three meals a day and talk to his family. The gunman nodded, acknowledging Morales as he spoke.
Then Morales grew angry, and asked the gunman a question that was apparently about prison rape: “You get to suck dick in prison? You get to be a little bitch?”
The gunman sarcastically smirked and nodded his head.
Harry Dean Reckard
Harry Dean Reckard, whose birthday was Thursday and whose 63-year-old mother was killed in the shooting, said that instead of celebrating with his family and friends, he had to come to court to confront the shooter.
The gunman had his head down when Reckard told him: “Look at me, man. You’re young and pathetic.”
Reckard said he has noticed that the gunman has smiled and rolled his eyes as the families give their statements. The gunman shrugged.
“Do you sleep good at night?” Reckard asked him.
The gunman shook his head.
Reckard, who lives in Omaha, told the gunman he is a proud Republican who voted for President Trump and would vote for him again.
“I don’t ever recall Trump ever saying go out and kill Mexicans,” he said, adding that his mother, Margie Reckard, wasn’t Mexican.
Reckard also asked the gunman if he was a white supremacist. The gunman shook his head.
“Are you sorry for what you did?” Reckard asked him.
The gunman nodded yes.
Adriana Manzano
Adriana Manzano, the wife of 41-year-old Ivan Filiberto Manzano, who died in the shooting, addressed the gunman in Spanish, telling him that he took away her children’s’ “hero, prince” and “their pillar of support.”
Her daughter was 9 and her son was 5 when the gunman killed Manzano.
“My daughter won’t have her father to give her away at her wedding,” she told him in Spanish. “My son won’t have someone to teach him to shave or to learn how to drive.”
She added that she hopes her children won’t grow up with hatred toward the gunman so they’re able to move on with their lives.
“Their dad and the kids are proud to be Mexican,” she said. “And as a wife and mother to them, I am proud to have been part of this Mexican family.”
Francisco Javier Rodriguez
Francisco Javier Rodriguez, the father of 15-year-old Javier Amir Rodriguez, wore a white T-shirt with his son’s face on the front and his name on the back. The younger Rodriguez was in high school and loved to play soccer. He wanted to become a Border Patrol agent after high school, his father said in court Thursday.
Javier’s face appeared on the computer monitors and TV screen in the courtroom, his hair combed to the side and a smile on his face.
“Look at him,” the father demanded of the gunman.
The gunman shook his head no.
“Now you don’t have the balls to look at him?” Francisco Rodriguez said. “You had the balls to shoot him.”
The gunman reluctantly looked at the monitor in front of him.
“You drove eight hours to commit your hate crime, without thinking of the damage you’d cause,” Rodriguez said.
Margaret Juarez
Margaret Juarez, whose 90-year-old father, Luis Juarez, was killed in the shooting and whose mother, Martha Juarez, was injured, told the gunman that his ignorance is what led him to do something so hurtful.
She berated him for thinking the U.S. is being invaded by immigrants, telling him that whoever taught him American history taught it all wrong.
“Native Americans and Mexicans were already here before your American settler homies rolled in,” she told him. “Think about that when you say you’re defending your country.”
She told him that people who hold racist views like him only contribute hate while immigrants contribute to the country’s economy.
“You were so worried about immigrants taking away something from you,” she told him. “Well, the only thing we’re taking away today is your freedom.”
As she walked back to the wooden bench to sit among the dozens of other victims’ families, the audience applauded her.
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