A young American, who killed 23 people at a popular Hispanic supermarket in El Paso in 2019, will finally plead guilty in federal court, according to court documents.
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Charged with “racist crimes resulting in death”, Patrick Crusius, 24, “notified the court of his intention to plead guilty”, a week after the prosecutors had given up asking for the death penalty.
A judge has set the hearing for February 8 to formalize his change of strategy and avoid a federal trial.
He still faces a murder trial in the state of Texas, which has not ruled out seeking the death penalty.
In early August 2019, Patrick Crusius had posted a document containing the theses of white supremacy. He denounced a “Hispanic invasion of Texas” and praised the author of the massacre in the mosques of Christchurch in New Zealand (51 dead on March 15).
He then drove about ten hours from the suburbs of Dallas where he lived, to El Paso, a predominantly Hispanic city on the border with Mexico, where he opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle in a hypermarket. Walmart.
When the police arrived, he had got out of a vehicle, his hands in the air, saying: “I am the shooter”.
While in police custody, he had admitted having wanted to attack “Mexicans”.
The carnage left 23 people dead, including eight Mexican nationals and a majority of Hispanic Americans. It had deeply shocked America and opened a debate on the responsibility for the anti-immigrant diatribes of Republican President Donald Trump.
The El Paso carnage remains one of the deadliest killings in United States history, yet it is regularly bereaved by shootings.
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