(Houston) A young American, who killed 23 people at a popular Hispanic community supermarket in El Paso in 2019, pleaded guilty in federal court on Wednesday, local media reports.
During a hearing in this American city bordering Mexico, Patrick Crusius, 24, formally pleaded guilty to the 90 counts against him, including “racist crimes resulting in death”, according to the ABC7 and KFOX14 channels.
His lawyers had announced his change of strategy in January, after federal prosecutors had given up seeking the death penalty against him.
He is still facing a trial for murder before the justice of the State of Texas, which has not ruled out requiring the death penalty.
At the beginning of August 2019, Patrick Crusius posted a document containing the theses of white supremacy. He denounced a “Hispanic invasion of Texas” and praised the author of the massacre in mosques in Christchurch, 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, where he opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle in a Walmart hypermarket.
When the police arrived, he got out of a vehicle, hands in the air, saying: “I am the shooter. »
While in police custody, he admitted that he wanted to attack “Mexicans”.
The carnage left 23 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.