Global Courant
EL PASO, Texas — The Texas man who shot and killed 23 people at a Walmart store in El Paso in a targeted attack on people of Mexican descent was sentenced Friday to 90 consecutive life sentences.
Patrick Crusius, van Allen, agreed to consecutive life sentences in February when he pleaded guilty to 90 federal counts, including 45 hate crime charges.
The judge asked him to be sent to ADX Florence, a maximum facility prison in Fremont County, Colorado, and requested that he receive mental health treatment.
The gunman traveled nearly 600 miles from North Texas to El Paso before opening fire with a WASR-10 rifle at shoppers on August 3, 2019.
Minutes before the attack, he posted a racist screed of hate online referring to an “invasion” of immigrants to the United States, the Justice Department said.
The department has said the man, who admitted to police he was the shooter, a self-proclaimed white nationalist.
Sentencing began on Wednesday and for days relatives of the dead spoke to the gunman about their anger and the damage he had caused.
“Look at my son,” Francisco Javier Rodriguez, whose 15-year-old son, Javier Amir, was killed, said Thursday as an image of the teen appeared on a screen.
Kathleen Johnson told the assailant that he shot her husband, David Johnson, at close range in aisle 3 that day.
“His innocent blood was everywhere. He was our breadwinner, loving father and grandfather,” said Johnson, who said she suffers from nightmares and post-traumatic stress disorder.
“I don’t even want to look at you,” she said.
Thomas Hoffman spoke about his father, Alexander Hoffman, sharing a photo of his parents celebrating 40 years of marriage and a ticket for a flight his father was scheduled to take that day.
“You shot my father in the back,” he said on Wednesday. “You are a coward.”
The gunman purchased the WASR-10, a Romanian-made semi-automatic variant of the AK-47 assault rifle, as well as 1,000 rounds of 7.62mm hollow-point ammunition nearly two months before the attack, according to the indictment.
He drove overnight from Allen, north of Dallas, to El Paso before opening fire on people shopping at the Walmart on Saturday morning.
In addition to the 23 killed, 22 were injured. The 23rd victim, Guillermo “Memo” Garcia, was wounded and died in a hospital in April 2020, nearly nine months after the shooting.
When the attacker was indicted on federal hate crime charges, then-Assistant U.S. Attorney General for Civil Rights Eric Dreiband called the mass shooting and other similar hate crimes heinous crimes designed to terrorize and intimidate.
“This kind of terror will not last” said Dreiband after the February 6, 2020 indictment.
The shooter pleaded guilty Feb. 8 to 45 counts of violating the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act and 45 Gun Counts, Justice Department said at the time.
Kayla McCormick reported from El Paso, Phil Helsel reported from Los Angeles.
Minyvonne Burke contributed.
