EL PASO, Texas - The community of this border city continues to mourn for the lives of 22 people killed in the Aug. 3 shooting at the Walmart store. They are also trying to make sense of why a 21-year-old man from a Dallas suburb would go on a shooting spree.
But one thing certain for now is that the gunman used the internet messaging forum 8chan prior to his crime where he expressed hatred for Hispanic people and laid out a plan for a deadly attack on the Hispanic community.
The site's creator Fredrick Brennan, who migrated to the Philippines in 2014, admitted that he created a "Frankenstein monster" after realizing that the online forum has led to massacres in the US.
Brennan started 8chan in 2013 as a means of free speech. He handed over management to a man named Jim Watkins in 2016.
Brennan said it's been challenging to moderate postings on the forum. He's been calling for the site to be shut down. It's now inaccessible.
“I never really imagined that this would happen -- that shooters would post their manifestos on 8chan. And I put some of the blame on the way they're administering it. They have this saying that was on 8chan before it was closed, you know, 'embrace infamy,' and they had that right on the homepage of 8chan," Brennan said.
Brennan said one of the reasons he resigned was because of the difficulty in moderating the site.
"It's like letting the mental patients run the asylum," he said.
US lawmakers have asked that the current owner of 8chan, Watkins, testify before the House Homeland Security Committee.
According to authorities, Watkins is not located in the Philippines but he posted a message on 8chan's Twitter account claiming to be on his way to America to accept the lawmakers' invitation.
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The mother of a young man suspected of gunning down 22 people at a Walmart in the US state of Texas called police weeks before, concerned about a military-style weapon he owned, the family's lawyers told CNN.
The report comes with bipartisan sentiment for action on gun safety appearing to grow after the killings in El Paso and another mass shooting hours later in Dayton, Ohio that left nine people dead.
CNN reported that the mother of the El Paso suspect, Patrick Crusius, had called police in the Dallas suburb of Allen weeks before the attack because she was concerned about his owning an "AK"-type firearm, the network quoted family lawyers as saying.
AK usually refers to a Kalashnikov, a type of semi-automatic rifle.
The lawyers, Chris Ayres and R. Jack Ayres, of Dallas, told CNN that Crusius's mother was worried given her son's age, maturity level and lack of experience with such a weapon.
They added that, during the call, a police officer told her that -- based on what she described -- her 21-year-old son was legally able to purchase the weapon.
But the mother's call was "informational" and not motivated out of a concern that her son posed a threat, the lawyers said, adding the mother did not give police her name or her son's name.
"This was not a volatile, explosive, erratic behaving kid," CNN quoted Chris Ayres as saying. "It's not like alarm bells were going off."
Chris Ayres could not immediately be reached when AFP contacted his law office.
Asked about the CNN report, Sergeant Jon Felty, of the Allen Police Department, told AFP: "I have nothing in our database to support this claim."
About 20 minutes before the rampage with a semi-automatic weapon, Crusius, who is white, posted a four-page white supremacist "manifesto" on the online forum 8chan that railed against Hispanics.
Several of those killed were Mexicans.
After the shootings, US President Donald Trump faced protests that his rhetoric on race has fuelled extremism.
In an address to the nation on Monday, Trump rejected racism and white supremacist ideology, and said he supported "red flag" laws allowing authorities to confiscate weapons from people believed to present grave risks.
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Residents in majority-Hispanic El Paso told US President Donald Trump Tuesday to stay away amid fury over his anti-immigration rhetoric as he struggles to unite the country in the wake of mass shootings that killed 31 people.
Trump is scheduled to travel Wednesday to the Texan border city where 22 died in a weekend gun massacre, before heading around 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) northeast and to Dayton, Ohio where a second gunman shot nine dead hours later.
The president called on Americans in a nationwide address Monday to condemn bigotry but community leaders say his words rang hollow set against a longstanding refusal to call out white supremacy and a history of provocative tweets widely condemned as racist.
"This president, who helped create the hatred that made Saturday's tragedy possible, should not come to El Paso," tweeted Beto O'Rourke, a Democratic presidential hopeful and former congressman who grew up in the city.
"We do not need more division. We need to heal. He has no place here."
Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley meanwhile said she would meet Trump and tell him "how unhelpful he's being. His comments weren't helpful on guns."
Before striking at a Walmart superstore in El Paso, the 21-year-old suspected gunman, who is white and from the Dallas area, reportedly posted an online manifesto railing against a "Hispanic invasion of Texas."
Critics pointed out that the language echoed much of Trump's rhetoric on Twitter and at rallies, where he has frequently framed Hispanic migrants as part of an "invasion."
Trump has also characterized Mexicans and Central Americans as criminals, gang members and rapists and described the communities of African American lawmakers on several occasions as "infested" with crime and filth.
- 'Not welcome' -
Congresswoman Veronica Escobar, whose district includes the area targeted by the El Paso gunman, urged Trump "to consider the fact that his words and his actions have played a role in this."
"From my perspective, he is not welcome here," Escobar told MSNBC. "He should not come here while we are in mourning."
El Paso mayor Dee Margo, announcing the visit, stressed that he was welcoming the president because it was his duty to do so.
Presidential advisor Kellyanne Conway accused Democrats of politicizing a moment of acute pain while Trump was trying to "bring the country together, heal a nation."
She was backed by the chairman of the El Paso County Republican Party, Adolpho Telles, who defended Trump's visit but told CNN he needs to be more careful about his language.
In his nationwide address, Trump spoke out against racism but blamed mental illness, video games and the internet for fueling gun violence, sidestepping the fact that other countries with these issues do not have mass shootings.
He had nothing substantial to say about gun control measures, drawing expressions of disappointment from those hoping for a healing moment.
"He mentioned gun issues one time," said Whaley, the Dayton mayor. "I think, watching the president over the past few years on the issue of guns... I don't know if he knows what he believes, frankly," she said.
- 'He has no right' -
Residents in El Paso, unimpressed by Trump's tightly scripted appeal for unity, told AFP they were fearful of a rise in white nationalism and said the president was part of the problem.
"I do blame our president. Since the moment he got into office the rhetoric, the hate that he's got towards people that are just different color skin, he has no right," said Silvia Rios.
The president began Tuesday apparently irritated by veiled criticism from former president Barack Obama, who warned US leaders against divisive rhetoric.
"We should soundly reject language coming out of the mouths of any of our leaders that feeds a climate of fear and hatred or normalizes racist sentiments," said Obama, who has only rarely spoken out on public affairs since leaving office in 2017.
In response Trump retweeted a quote from an anchor on Fox News who said it was inappropriate for a former president to criticize a successor over a shooting.
"President Obama had 32 mass shootings during his reign. Not many people said Obama is out of control," read the quote from Brian Kilmeade.
Legislation to overhaul gun control under Obama failed in 2013 when the Republican-controlled Senate rejected a ban of assault-style weapons and expanding background checks.
He told the BBC two years later gun control was "the one area where I feel that I've been most frustrated and most stymied."
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EL PASO, Texas - Two more victims of a shooting rampage at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, died of their wounds on Monday, police said, raising the death toll to 22 in the massacre as U.S. President Donald Trump planned a visit to the stricken community.
The latest fatalities bring to 31 the number of people killed during the weekend in mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, that have touched off a new furor over gun violence in the United States.
Patrick Crusius, 21, has been charged with a single count of capital murder in the El Paso case, court documents show, in what is likely a legal place holder to keep him in custody while the investigation is under way.
Authorities have cited a lengthy anti-immigrant manifesto, apparently posted online by the suspect before the Saturday morning shooting in the heavily Hispanic border city, which they said was evidence the bloodshed was racially motivated.
Eight of those killed in the attack were Mexican citizens, according to the Mexican government.
The four-page statement uploaded to 8chan, a largely un-moderated online message board often used by extremists, called the Walmart attack "a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas."
It also expressed support for a gunman who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March.
The El Paso killings prompted 8chan founder Frederick Brennan, in an interview with the New York Times, to call for the site to be shut down. Brennan no longer has control of 8chan, which is now run from the Philippines by a U.S. Army veteran, the Times reported.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott said Saturday's rampage appeared to be a hate crime and federal prosecutors called it domestic terrorism. A Texas prosecutor said the state will seek the death penalty against Crusius if he is convicted.
Trump said Americans "must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy" and blamed the internet and violent video games for fostering violence.
TRUMP TO VISIT WEDNESDAY
El Paso Mayor Dee Margo told reporters at an afternoon news conference that Trump would visit the city on Wednesday. The Democratic mayor asked that the visit by the Republican president amid a divisive gun control debate not be politicized.
U.S. gun control activists say the internet and video games cannot be blamed because they are also are popular in countries where mass shootings are virtually unknown, in part because it is harder to obtain a firearm.
It was unclear if Crusius had retained a lawyer or would make an initial court appearance. El Paso Police Chief Greg Allen said the suspect was cooperating with investigators.
The suspect's grandparents said in a statement read to reporters by a family outside their home in the Dallas suburb of Allen, 650 miles (1,046 km) east of El Paso, that they were devastated by the attack.
"He lived with us in our house in Allen, Texas, while he attended Collin College," they said. "He moved out of our house six weeks ago and has spent a few nights here while we were out of town."
FBI Director Christopher Wray told a congressional panel on July 23 that the bureau has recorded about 100 arrests of domestic terrorism suspects in the preceding nine months and that most investigations of that kind involve some form of white supremacy.
The Texas rampage was followed just 13 hours later by the mass shooting in Ohio and came a week after a man shot dead three people at a California garlic festival before taking his own life.
In Dayton, Ohio, a gunman in body armor and a mask killed nine people in less than a minute and wounded 27 others in the downtown historic district before he was shot dead by police.
Police said the El Paso suspect opened fire with a rifle on Walmart shoppers, many of them bargain-hunting for back-to-school supplies, then surrendered to officers who confronted him outside the store.
In El Paso, residents on Monday brought crosses representing each of the victims to a growing memorial site near the store.
El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, together with the neighboring city of Las Cruces, New Mexico, form a metropolitan border area of some 2.5 million residents constituting the largest bilingual, bi-national population in North America.
Trump has derided asylum seekers and other immigrants coming across the U.S. southern border as liars and criminals, prompting Democrats to accuse him of racism.
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EL PASO, Texas - A single capital murder charge was filed on Sunday against the man accused of killing 20 people and wounding more than two dozen others at a Walmart store in El Paso, a mass shooting authorities are viewing as a case of domestic terrorism.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott said Saturday's rampage in the heavily Hispanic city appeared to be a hate crime. Police cited an anti-immigrant screed posted online shortly before the shooting, which they attributed to the suspect, Patrick Crusius, as evidence that the bloodshed was racially motivated.
It was the second of three separate public shooting sprees carried out in the United States in the span of a week, an unusually dense cluster of massacres that prompted fresh alarm in a country accustomed to reports of young men shooting down strangers.
The County of El Paso's state court website lists a single charge of capital murder against Crusius, a 21-year-old white man from Allen, Texas.
His grandparents, with whom Crusius had recently been living, said they were devastated by the attack.
"He lived with us in our house in Allen, Texas, while he attended Collin College," the statement said, read aloud by a family friend to reporters outside the home on Sunday. "He moved out of our house six weeks ago, and has spent a few nights here while we were out of town."
The single charge is likely a legal place holder to keep Crusius in custody until further charges can be filed against him for each of the dead and the wounded.
It was unclear if Crusius has a lawyer or when a bond hearing or other court appearances will occur.
A state prosecutor said prosecutors will seek the death penalty against Crusius if he is found guilty.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a statement on Sunday the attack "underscores the continued threat posed by domestic violent extremists and perpetrators of hate crimes."
The agency said it remains concerned that more US-based extremists could become inspired by these and previous high-profile attacks to engage in similar acts of violence.
The US attorney for the western district of Texas, John Bash, said federal authorities were treating the El Paso massacre as a case of domestic terrorism.
"And we're going to do what we do to terrorists in this country, which is to deliver swift and certain justice," he told a news conference on Sunday. He said the attack appeared "to be designed to intimidate a civilian population, to say the least."
FBI Director Christopher Wray told a congressional panel on July 23 that the bureau has recorded about 100 arrests of domestic terrorism suspects in the preceding nine months and that most investigations of that kind involve some form of white supremacy.
BACK-TO-BACK SHOOTINGS
The Texas rampage was followed just 13 hours later by another mass shooting, and came a week after a man shot dead three people at a California garlic festival before he was killed by police.
In Dayton, Ohio a gunman in body armor and a mask killed nine people in less than a minute and wounded 27 others in the city's downtown historic district before he was shot dead by police.
Democratic candidates for next year's presidential election called on Sunday for stricter gun laws and accused President Donald Trump of stoking racial tensions.
Trump has frequently derided many asylum seekers and other immigrants coming across the US southern border as liars and criminals. At a political rally he held in May, after asking the crowd what could be done about immigrants coming in illegally, Trump smiled and joked after someone in the crowd yelled back: "Shoot them!"
Responding to the shootings, Trump called on lawmakers to pass new background checks laws for buying guns, and suggested any such legislation might also include greater restrictions on immigration.
"We must have something good, if not GREAT, come out of these two tragic events!" he wrote on Twitter on Monday morning ahead of planned remarks on the subject. On Sunday, he attributed the shootings to what he called the "mental illness" of the killers.
SIGNS OF HATE
El Paso Police Chief Greg Allen said the suspect was cooperating with investigators.
"He basically didn't hold anything back," Allen said at Sunday's news conference, but declined to elaborate.
Police said the suspect opened fire with a rifle on shoppers, many of them bargain-hunting for back-to-school supplies, then surrendered to officers who confronted him outside the store.
A police spokesman said on Sunday that the names of the victims would be released only when relatives had been informed, and he said he had no estimate for how long that would take.
Crusius comes from Allen, Texas, a Dallas suburb some 650 miles (1,046 km) east of El Paso, which lies along the Rio Grande across the US-Mexico border from Ciudad Juarez.
A four-page statement posted on 8chan, an online message board often used by extremists, and believed to have been written by the suspect, called the Walmart attack "a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas."
It also expressed for support for the gunman who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March.
El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, together with the neighboring city of Las Cruces, New Mexico, form a metropolitan border area of some 2.5 million residents constituting the largest bilingual, bi-national population in North America.
The rampage in El Paso on Saturday was the eighth most deadly mass shooting in recent years in the United States.
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U.S. cyber security firm Cloudflare on Monday said the company will terminate online message board 8chan as its customer after a shooter used the messaging forum just before killing 20 people at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas on Saturday.
The shooter is believed to have posted a four-page statement on 8chan, and called the Walmart attack "a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas".
The suspect was officially identified as a 21-year-old white male from Allen, Texas, a Dallas suburb some 650 miles (1,046 km) east of El Paso, which lies along the Rio Grande, across the U.S.-Mexico border from Ciudad Juarez. Citing law enforcement officials, multiple news media reports named the suspect as Patrick Crusius.
The suspect's post on 8chan expressed support for the gunman who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March.
"We just sent a notice that we are terminating 8chan as a customer effective at midnight tonight Pacific Time," Cloudflare Chief Executive Officer Matthew Prince said in a blog post.
"Based on evidence we've seen, it appears that he (gunman)posted a screed to the site immediately before beginning his terrifying attack on the El Paso Walmart killing 20 people," Prince said.
The CEO's blog added that while 8chan did not violate law by not moderating the "hate-filled" content posted by its users, it has "created an environment that revels in violating its spirit".
source: news.abs-cbn.com
EL PASO, Texas --A gunman armed with an assault rifle killed 20 people Saturday when he opened fire on shoppers at a packed Walmart store in the latest mass shooting in the United States.
As residents of the southern border town of El Paso in Texas tried to absorb the full horror of what is being treated as a potential "hate crime," fresh calls rang out to end the nationwide "epidemic" of gun violence.
It was the second fatal shooting in less than a week at a Walmart store in the US and comes after a mass shooting in California last weekend.
One suspect was taken into custody while authorities were studying an extremist manifesto purportedly written by the gunman.
Footage shot on camera phones appeared to show multiple bodies lying on the ground in the store's parking lot while El Paso authorities made a desperate appeal for blood donations.
Other footage showed terrified shoppers running out of the store as gunfire echoed.
Two to 82 years
"Twenty innocent people from El Paso have lost their lives," Texas Governor Greg Abbott told a press conference.
"We as a state unite in support of these victims and their family members... We pray that God can be with those who have been harmed in any way and bind up their wounds."
Police chief Greg Allen confirmed that in addition to the 20 confirmed fatalities, there were 26 wounded.
Various news reports said the ages of victims being treated at hospitals ranged from two to 82 years.
Police said that Walmart was "at capacity" at the time of the shooting, with 1,000 to 3,000 customers inside.
After officials initially said three people had been detained, police confirmed that a 21-year-old from Allen, Texas, was the only person in custody.
"Right now we have a manifesto from this individual that indicates to some degree, it has a nexus to potential hate crime," Allen said.
US media named the suspect as 21-year-old Patrick Crusius, who is white.
The "manifesto" purportedly written by Crusius that was circulated online includes passages railing against the "Hispanic invasion" of Texas and the author makes clear that he expected to be killed during his attack.
Witnesses said the gunman appeared to be shooting at random when he opened fire around 10:30 a.m.
One woman, who gave her name as Vanessa, said she had just pulled into the Walmart parking lot when the shooting began.
"You could hear the pops, one right after another and at that point as I was turning, I saw a lady, seemed she was coming out of Walmart, headed to her car. She had her groceries in her cart and I saw her just fall," she told Fox News.
The witness said the gunman wore black t-shirt, combat trousers and was wearing ear muffs.
"He was just shooting randomly. It wasn't to any particular person. It was any that would cross paths."
Another shopper described how he managed to avoid being hit by hiding along with his mother between two vending machines just outside the store.
"That's where the individual tried to shoot at me, which he missed cause I kind of ducked down," Robert Curado told the El Paso Times.
'How you doing, brother'
Video captured by a witness in the parking lot in the immediate aftermath of the shooting showed three people lying motionless on the ground.
One had fallen next to a truck, while two were on the sidewalk outside the store entrance. " Ambulance! Help!" people cried as they rushed to the victims.
"How you doing, brother, how you doing," one man was heard saying on the recording.
A still captured from CCTV showed the gunman carrying what appeared to be an AK-47.
President Donald Trump, who is spending the weekend at his golf club in New Jersey, condemned the "terrible" shooting after being briefed by Attorney General Bill Barr and Abbott.
It has been a particularly bad week for gun violence in the United States.
Two people died and a police officer was wounded Tuesday at a Walmart in Mississippi.
Last Sunday a 19-year-old gunman opened fire at a food festival in northern California, killing three, including two children.
Beto O'Rourke, a former US congressman for El Paso who is now running for president, cut off his campaigning in the wake of the shooting.
"I'm incredibly saddened and it's very hard to think about this. But I tell you El Paso is the strongest place in the world, this community is going to come together," he told supporters.
Elizabeth Warren, a senator who is among the frontrunners for the Democratic party's presidential nomination, said "far too many communities have suffered through tragedies like this already.
"We must act now to end our country's gun violence epidemic," she said.
Another presidential hopeful Cory Booker said the US had "to end this national nightmare" and "find the moral courage to take action to end this carnage."
source: news.abs-cbn.com
WASHINGTON - The BBC asked the White House to review security arrangements Tuesday after a BBC cameraman was assaulted at a rally in Texas with President Donald Trump.
British Broadcasting Corporation cameraman Ron Skeans was attacked by a Trump supporter yelling anti-media slogans during the US president's rally in El Paso late Monday.
As he does at most rallies, Trump had repeatedly encouraged the crowd to boo at the journalists covering the event, accusing them of "fake" coverage.
However, Trump spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the president "condemns all acts of violence against any individual or group of people, including members of the press."
"We ask that anyone attending an event do so in a peaceful and respectful manner," she said.
Skeans was unhurt and the assailant, who was wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat, was restrained by a blogger for the pro-Trump outlet Frontline America and removed from the media riser.
Paul Danahar, the BBC's Americas bureau editor, said in a tweet that he had asked Sanders for a "full review of security arrangements after last night's attack."
"Access into the media area was unsupervised," Danahar said. "No one in law enforcement intervened before, during or after the attack."
Danahar dismissed a statement from the "Trump for President" campaign, which expressed appreciation for "the swift action from venue security and law enforcement officers."
"There was no swift action to prevent or interrupt the attack by any security agency," Danahar said.
The White House Correspondents' Association also condemned the attack.
"We are relieved that, this time, no one was seriously hurt," said WHCA president Olivier Knox. "The president of the United States should make absolutely clear to his supporters that violence against reporters is unacceptable."
BBC Washington correspondent Gary O'Donoghue, who was covering the El Paso event, said his cameraman was pushed and shoved by the unidentified assailant "after the president repeatedly goaded the crowd over supposed media bias."
He said the man attempted to smash the BBC camera.
"Happily, Ron is fine," O'Donoghue said.
Trump paused his remarks following the commotion in the crowd and -- pointing at the media -- asked "You alright? Everything OK?"
He resumed his attacks on the press later in the speech, referring to the "totally dishonest media."
Trump frequently denounces the media as the "enemy of the people" and condemns critical reports about his administration as "fake news."
New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger urged Trump during an interview last month to tone down what he called his "potentially dangerous" rhetoric toward the press.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
