El Paso remembers victims of mall shooting

EL PASO – “You will never be forgotten” were the words that El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser said as he recalled the 23 people who died in the mass shooting at Walmart Cielo Vista during 2019.

The El Paso City Council held an event in honor of the victims of one of the most devastating attacks in the United States and where members of the Council rang a bell while the faces of the deceased, as well as their names appeared on a display.

When speaking, Leeser said that since 10:39 a.m. in the morning, the time the first call to the 911 emergency number was received, the 23 people who were murdered have been missed, so “today we miss them and we pay tribute to them”.

More than 20 people died and dozens more were injured in an event that shocked and shocked the entire city in an event that will never be forgotten, he said.

“Someone, for some reason, that I will never understand why could drive 11 hours to come to hurt us and I think that for the next 100 years we will keep wondering why someone came to hurt the city of El Paso,” he said.

The victims are always remembered, but this time with even greater reason, since it commemorates another year of the brutal and cowardly attack against innocent people “and that is something that we will never know why it happened,” added the Major.

During the ceremony, a bell was tolled for each fatality, their name was spoken and their face was shown on a monitor.

When he finished naming them, the Mayor of El Paso took the floor and said that they will always live in our hearts “and when we look up, I can tell you, you will never be forgotten.”

Isabel Salcido, representative of District 5, said that for the Hispanic community this was a very personal attack that will take a long time to heal and it is something that hurts everyone even though the victims are not direct relatives.

Local artists from the city also took to the streets to leave their mark through paintings where the victims and the pain of the attack are remembered.

On Franklin Mountain, which is found in El Paso, there is a giant star that lights up every night, this time it kept blinking, as a memory of the victims of that tragedy.

Within the framework of this commemoration, it was planned that the judicial hearing would also be held against the alleged perpetrator of the shooting, Patrick Wood Crusius, however, it was necessary to postpone it until November of this year.

At first it was scheduled to be in the morning through a video conference, but due to the effects of the Coronavirus, the court has a large number of backlogs in criminal trials before a jury.

As will be remembered, after the shooting registered on August 3, 2019, Patrick Wood Crusius confessed that the objective of his attack was to kill as many Mexicans as possible.

For this action, he used a WASR-10 assault rifle and once the attack was over, he surrendered himself to the authorities without offering minimal resistance, even saying: “I am the attacker.”

Police data indicate that the alleged assailant lives in Allen Texas, very close to the city of Dallas, for which he drove several hours to reach El Paso.

Crusius left a manifesto online that spoke of a “Hispanic invasion of Texas,” for which he planned to eliminate as many people as possible in order to have a more sustainable way of life for the country.