Prosecutors are to seek the death penalty for the gunman behind a shooting in Texas that killed 20 people and is being treated as an act of domestic terrorism, officials said Sunday.
“I can tell you from the outset, the state charge is capital murder and so he is eligible for the death penalty,” the local District Attorney Jaime Esparza told a press conference, a day after the shooting outside a Walmart in the town of El Paso.
“We will seek the death penalty,” he added. “We are a good and loving community, but we will hold him accountable.”
Local police are working alongside federal investigators after Saturday’s shooting in the border town which was carried out by a gunman who has been widely identified in the media as a 21-year-old white man from the Dallas area.
John Bash, the US attorney for the Western District of Texas, who works under the authority of the federal government’s Attorney General Bill Barr, said that the shooting was being considered as “a domestic terrorism” case.
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“I have been in close consultation with Attorney General Barr,” he told the same press conference.
“We are conducting a methodical investigation with our partners, a careful investigation but with a view toward bringing federal hate crimes charges… and federal firearms charges which carry a penalty of death.
“We are seriously considering those charges, we are going to conduct a methodical and careful investigation with a few towards those charges.
“We are also treating this as a domestic terrorist case — there’s a statutory definition of domestic terrorism… this meets it. It appears to be designed to intimidate a civilian population to say the least.
“We are treating it as domestic terrorism case, and we will do what we do in terrorists in this country, which is to deliver swift and certain justice.”
Investigators are currently pouring over a “manifesto” purportedly written by the shooter in which he rages against the “Hispanic invasion” of El Paso which borders Mexico as well as praising the mass shootings at two mosques in New Zealand.
Greg Allen, the El Paso police chief, said “it’s beginning to look more solidly” that the four-page document was written by the gunman who was detained by police at the scene and is currently being questioned.
The suspected gunman “basically didn’t hold anything back” during questioning, Allen told the press conference.
AFP
