Global Courant
The massacre occurred on August 3, 2019 in Texas, United States. They have not yet ruled out sentencing him to the death penalty.
Patrick Crusius, who four years ago shot and killed 23 people in a market in El Paso, Texas, was sentenced this Friday to 90 life imprisonments and they have not yet ruled out sentencing him to the death penalty.
The 24-year-old pleaded guilty in February of this year to almost 50 federal hate crime charges, due to the massacre he perpetrated on August 3, 2019 at a Walmart store, in what went down in history as one of the most tragic racist attacks in the United States.
During the hearing, the defendant, who remained handcuffed throughout, did not speak or show any reaction while the verdict was read.
Patrick Crusius, entering a hypermarket in El Paso, Texas, with an AK-47 assault rifle and multiple cartridges.
District Judge David Guaderrama asked that he be sent to ADX Florence, a maximum security prison located in Fremont County, Colorado, and undergo mental health treatment.
Crusius still faces another trial in a Texas court that could result in the death penalty, the ANSA news agency reported.
His lawyer, Joe Spencer, acknowledged to the magistrate before sentencing that his client has a “broken brain” and that his “thinking is at odds with reality, giving rise to delusional thoughts.”
Patrick Crusius was sentenced to 90 life sentences. Photo: Briana Sanchez / El Paso Times via AP.
The sentence was handed down after two days in which several relatives of the victims testified, among them Mexican citizens and one German.
The El Paso massacre: one of America’s most tragic racist crimes
On August 3, 2019, Patrick Crusius drove nearly 10 hours and nearly 1,000 kilometers from North Texas to El Paso to carry out the massacre.
Minutes before, he had made a publication on his social networks in which he referred to an “invasion” of immigrants to the United States. He defined himself as a white nationalist.
Patrick Crusius could be sentenced to death. Photo: Briana Sanchez / El Paso Times via AP.
According to a police report, the author acknowledged that once he arrived at the store he opened fire “using an AK-47 (assault rifle) and shooting multiple innocent victims.” “The defendant said that his objective was the Mexicans,” it can be read at the end of the document.
The people killed ranged in age from a 15-year-old high school athlete to several elderly people. Among them were immigrants, a retired city bus driver, teachers, shopkeepers and several Mexican citizens who had crossed the US border on routine shopping trips.
The attack was the deadliest of a dozen hate crime-related mass shootings in the United States since 2006, according to USA Today and Northeastern University.
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