Deaths, injuries in El Paso, Texas shopping complex shooting

Young gunman in custody after a massacre at an El Paso shopping mall.

Surveillance footage shows the man suspected of shooting and killing at least 18 people in El Paso, Texas. Source:Supplied.

At least 20 people have been killed in a shooting in a busy shopping area in the Texas border town of El Paso, and a 21-year-old man has been taken into custody, law enforcement officials said.

Among the possibilities being investigated is whether it was a hate crime, the police chief said.

Two law enforcement officials identified the gunman as Patrick Crusius of the Dallas area.

A law enforcement official in El Paso told me the Walmart shooter is in custody. Patrick Crusius of Dallas. Just turned 21 years old this week. pic.twitter.com/CEJh6rYij1

— Anna Giaritelli (@Anna_Giaritelli) August 3, 2019

Texas Governor Greg Abbott said 20 people have been killed, and more than two dozen others injured.

Hospital officials said another 23 people were injured and being treated. Most of the victims were shot at a Walmart near the Cielo Vista Mall, El Paso police Sgt. Robert Gomez said at a news conference. He said the store was packed with as many as 3,000 people during the busy back-to-school shopping season. “This is unprecedented in El Paso,” said Gomez, who added that many of the injured had life-threatening injuries.

Patrick Crusius was identified as the suspect in the shooting at Walmart near Cielo Vista Mall in El Paso, Texas. Picture: Heavy.

Police responded in the early Saturday afternoon (local time) to an active shooter scene at the Cielo Vista Mall, near Interstate 10 on the east side of the city, and were advising people to stay away from the area and to look for missing family members at a school being used as a reunification area.

Ryan Mielke, a spokesman for University Medical Center of El Paso, said 12 people were brought to the hospital with injuries, including one that died. Two of the injured were children who were being transferred to El Paso Children’s Hospital, he said. He declined to provide additional details on the victims. Eleven other victims were being treated at Del Sol Medical Center, according to hospital spokesman Victor Guerrero.

Governor Abbott called the shooting “a heinous and senseless act of violence” and said the state had deployed a number of law enforcement officers to the city.

A family of three was among a dozen people waiting outside a bus station. They were trying to return to their car that was in a blocked-off Walmart parking lot.

“I heard the shots but I thought they were hits, like roof construction,” said Adriana Quezada, 39, who was in the women’s clothing section of Walmart with her two children.

Sgt. Enrique Carrillo said by midafternoon that a suspect was in custody and the public was no longer in danger.

Law enforcement agencies respond to a shooting at a Wal-Mart near Cielo Vista Mall in El Paso, Texas today. Picture: AFP

Ms Quezada’s 19-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son threw themselves to the ground, then ran out of the Walmart through an emergency exit. She said they were not hurt.

White House staff said President Donald Trump was briefed on the shooting and spoke about it with Attorney General William Barr and Governor Abbott.

'God be with you all': Trump pledges full support for El Paso shooting victims as lawmakers also grieve https://t.co/gISsidBeWr via @usatoday

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 3, 2019

Presidential candidate and former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke appeared a bit shaken as he appeared at a candidate forum Saturday in Las Vegas shortly after news of the shooting in his hometown was reported.

Mr O’Rourke, who said he had called his wife before taking the stage, said the shooting shatters “any illusion that we have that progress is inevitable” on tackling gun violence.

The Democrat said he heard early reports that the shooter might have had a military-style weapon, saying we need to “keep that (expletive) on the battlefield and do not bring it into our communities.” “We have to find some reason for optimism and hope or else we consign ourselves to a future where nearly 40,000 people a year will lose their lives to gun violence and I cannot accept that,” Mr O’Rourke said.

El Paso, which has about 680,000 residents, is in West Texas and sits across the border from Juarez, Mexico. It has become a focal point of the US immigration debate.

AP