By Nelson Oliveira
New York Daily News
He showed up at the Walmart to hunt Mexicans.
The man charged in the massacre at a Texas store last week confessed to the shooting and admitted to targeting “Mexicans,” police wrote in an affidavit —suggesting that the worst attack on Latinos in U.S. history was motivated by his hatred of our neighbors to the south.
Police said Patrick Crusius told them “I’m the shooter” when they caught him at an intersection near the El Paso store on Saturday, according to the document, first obtained Friday by The Washington Post.
The 21-year-old suspect, who’s white, faces capital murder charges and has been in jail since the attack. The shooting, which is being described as domestic terrorism, left 22 people dead and dozens more wounded. At least seven Mexican citizens died in the shooting.
Authorities believe Crusius wrote an online screed decrying a “Hispanic invasion of Texas” shortly before the massacre. They are considering federal hate crime charges against him.
Critics have blamed President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric for stoking a climate of hatred and fueling white nationalist violence. His motorcade was greeted with protests and “Racist Go Home” signs when he visited the border city on Wednesday.
“Who has been the orator of trying to demonize and denigrate Mexicans? Donald Trump,” the Rev. Al Sharpton said in an MNSBC interview Friday afternoon.
The president, who has long stereotyped Mexicans as murderers and rapists, repeatedly rejected the accusation this week.
Detective Adrian Garcia wrote in the affidavit that Crusius has cooperated with police since the beginning. The suspect got out of his car with his hands in the air when police found him Saturday and later waived his right to an attorney. Garcia told officers he traveled from Allen, a Texas city more than 650 miles from El Paso, to carry out the shooting.
“The defendant stated once inside the store he opened fire using his AK-47 shooting multiple innocent victims,” Garcia wrote. “The defendant states his target were ‘Mexicans.’”
The Mexican government vowed to take legal action against the U.S. over what it described as “a terrorist act against innocent Mexicans.”
“We are outraged,” Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said in a statement. “These hate crimes should never happen again.”
An attorney for the Crusius family told The Associated Press that they never heard him use the type of racist language he allegedly posted online the day of the rampage.
The attack came about 13 hours before another shooter opened fire in a downtown area in Dayton, Ohio, killing nine people and injuring at least 27. Connor Betts, 24, was killed by police less than a minute after he fired the first shot.
The back-to-back weekend shootings have reignited calls for stricter gun laws, a move the Republican-led Senate and the National Rifle Association have long opposed. Trump, however, has suggested his party may agree on stronger background check measures.
