The Texas gunman who killed 23 people in a 2019 attack targeting Hispanic shoppers at El Paso Walmart is set to plead guilty to murder, and the case is finally coming to an end.
Patrick Crucius, 26, pleaded guilty on Monday and is expected to receive a life sentence in a prison where there is no chance of racist mass shooting near the US-Mexican border on August 3, 2019. Democrat El Paso County Attorney James Montoya said last month that he had been offering Crucius to provide a plea deal to avoid the country’s prisons.
Crucius was sentenced to 90 consecutive life sentences in federal court in 2023 after pleading guilty to hating crimes and arms charges. Federal prosecutors under the Biden administration have removed the death penalty from the table.
Gunmen are expected to spend time in a Texas prison. Crusius was initially arrested by a local government and, according to federal prisons, will be transferred to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice if sentenced on a state charge.
El Paso Walmart Shooter will face a life sentence of 90 for the attack that killed 23
A woman is reflected in the photo when she saw a makeshift memorial at the scene of a mass shooting at a shopping complex in El Paso, Texas on Tuesday, August 6, 2019. (AP)
Crucius was 21 years old when authorities said he had driven from his home in Dallas, in the suburbs, to El Paso for more than 10 hours and fired at Walmart.
Prosecutors said Crucius was wearing an earmuff to mute the sound of the shooting as he began firing AK-style rifles in the store’s parking lot. He then moved into the store and continued firing, and shoppers cornered the shoppers before firing at the bank near the entrance where nine people were killed, and those in the check-out area and corridor.
When he left the store, he shot a passing car, killed an old man and injured his wife.
Crucius was taken into custody some time later and confessed to being shot at the officers.
In a post on an online message board prior to the shooting, White Crucius said the massacre was “in response to Texas Hispanic invasion.” He also argued that Hispanics would take over the government and the economy.
“Aggression” language continues after the El Paso Walmart shooting
In this August 12, 2019 photo, mourners visit a makeshift memorial near Walmart in El Paso, Texas. (AP)
His social media posts included rhetoric about the national immigration debate. He expressed support for President Donald Trump’s policies on immigration, including the president’s plan to build a wall on the tropical border. The Republican president was his first term at the time.
After the shooting, Crucius told officers he was targeting Mexicans.
Those killed in the shooting ranged from 15 years old to grandparents. Victims included immigrants and Mexican citizens who crossed the US border on their daily shopping trips.
“Racism is something I always thought didn’t exist. Clearly that’s true,” Jessica Coca Garcia, who suffered from a wound in her leg but recovered, said in a cross-road speech from the county jail where Crucius was held a week after the shooting. Her husband was killed in the incident.
Attorney Joe Spencer, who represents Crusius, described Crusius on Thursday as a “broken brain individual.” Spencer said Crucius had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, which could include hallucinations, delusions and mood swings.
The memorial honoring the victims of the 2019 Walmart mass shootings is depicted on Tuesday, March 25th, 2025 in El Paso, Texas. (AP)
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Montoya said he offered a plea agreement because most of the victims’ relatives were eager to conclude the case, but he admitted that not all families agreed. He supports the death penalty and believes Crucius deserves it, but he believes that if his office continued to pursue the death penalty, the case may not have been brought to trial until 2028.
When he took office in January, Montoya became the fourth district attorney to oversee the case in nearly six years. One of his predecessors resigned in 2022 after being pressured to handle the lawsuit. Montoya said the Covid-19 pandemic also caused delays in closing the incident.
Stephanie Melendez, whose father, David Johnson, died protecting his wife and granddaughter, said she initially wanted Crucius to receive the death penalty, but later hoped it would end when the case continued to drag.
“I just wanted to finish it,” Melendez said. “I relived everything. I went to court for hours, and finished the briefing that happened after it was the same story over and over, because honestly, it’s like trauma over and over again.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
