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The suspect in the El Paso Walmart shootout that left 22 dead was indicted by a grand jury on Thursday accused of qualified murder, according to the prosecutor's office. Prosecutors said that they would ask for the death penalty.
When he was arrested a few minutes after the massacre, the suspect, Patrick Crusius of Allen, Texas, said, "I am the shooter," authorities said. The suspect, who is white, also told the police that he had targeted Mexicans, authorities said.
The August 3 massacre was one of the deadliest mass killings in US history. Qualified murder is the most serious charge in the state of Texas and can be punished with capital punishment or life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Asked about possible hate crime charges, Claudia Duran, director of the El Paso County District Attorney's Office, said: "At the moment, we have only been charged with qualified murder. "
Nineteen minutes before the first call to 911, the authorities were alerted by a large-scale shooting, an anti-immigrant woman filled with hatredsto appeared online. Authorities said it was written by the suspect. he stated that he was carrying out the attack in "response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas". The most deadly attack targeting Latinos in modern American history, the shooting in El Paso, an 80% Hispanic city, has deeply disrupted Latinos across the United States.
Shortly after his arrest, the suspect told investigators that after driving more than 10 hours from Allen to El Paso, he was lost, then went to Walmart because he was hungry, according to court documents. He also told investigators that he had used an AK-47 type rifle and had brought several Allen magazines with him to carry out the killings.
His mother had called Allen's police department in the weeks leading up to the shooting to ask if his son was mature enough to handle the rifle that he had recently ordered. The police told him that, according to law, his son was allowed to have the weapon, a lawyer from his family said.
A lawyer from Mr. Crusius could not be contacted immediately for a comment on Thursday. His attorney-at-law, Mark Stevens, previously stated that he would use "all available legal tools" to prevent his client from being executed. Mr Crusius is being held without bail, the authorities said.
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