A federal judge on Friday sentenced a white supremacist to 90 consecutive life sentences for a 2019 shooting in which he burned 23 people and wounded 22 others at a Texas Walmart when he targeted Hispanics, local media reported.
The sentence handed down by federal Judge David Guaderrama in El Paso builds on a February plea deal in which 24-year-old shooter Patrick Crusius pleaded guilty and accepted 90 consecutive life sentences to avoid the federal death penalty. .
Crusius did not speak in court. His attorney Joe Spencer made a statement on his behalf in which he said the shooter suffered from a mental illness that led to the shooting. Prosecutors disputed that claim, saying that Crusius knew what he was doing when he carried out the massacre.
His federal sentence came after two days of testimony, some of the 22 injured survivors and relatives of the 23 dead, who delivered shock statements in the presence of the shooter.
Prosecutors said the shooter drove more than 1,000 km overnight from suburban Dallas to the border city of El Paso, carrying out the massacre on August 3, 2019, with a Romanian derivative of the AK-47 and ammunition from hollow point
Just before the assault, the shooter posted a manifesto online declaring: “This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas. They are the instigators, not me. I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement caused for the invasion.”
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
