The Aftermath of Mass Shootings in Dayton and El Paso
President Trump spoke out against racism and white supremacy in the wake of two mass shootings, but he stopped short of embracing tighter restrictions on guns.
President Trump condemned racism and white supremacy.
President Trump condemned racism and white supremacy on Monday morning, in the wake of back-to-back mass shootings over the weekend that killed a total of 31 people and wounded dozens more. One of the massacres took place moments after the suspected gunman posted a hateful manifesto online, the authorities said.
“In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy — these sinister ideologies must be defeated,” Mr. Trump said during brief public remarks at the White House that denounced the ideologies espoused by the suspect in the attack at a Walmart store in El Paso.
“Hate has no place in America,” he continued. “Hatred warps the mind, ravages the heart and devours the soul.”
Mr. Trump stopped short of embracing tighter restrictions on guns, and called instead for more focus on violent video games and mental illnesses.
Earlier on Monday, Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter that Republicans and Democrats should come together to pass gun safety legislation, perhaps “marrying” it to new immigration laws — two issues that have long divided the parties.
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Mayor Dee Margo of El Paso said on Monday that Mr. Trump would travel to El Paso on Wednesday. Mr. Margo tried to head off any narrative that he would oppose the visit, which he viewed as his responsibility to accept as mayor.
“This is not a political visit as he had before,” Mr. Margo said. “He is the president of the United States, so in that capacity, I will fulfill my obligation as mayor of El Paso to meet with the president.”
But the mayor vowed, “I will continue to challenge harmful and inaccurate statements about El Paso.”
The El Paso police identified the victims as the death toll climbed to 22.
On Monday, the El Paso Police Department said the death toll in the attack, which unfolded when a gunman stormed into a busy Walmart, had risen to 22, after two of the dozens who were wounded on Saturday died in the hospital.
Greg Allen, the El Paso police chief, said at a news conference Monday afternoon that 15 people wounded in the shooting remained in the hospital, two of whom were in critical condition. Nine people had been discharged, he said.
Mr. Allen said the suspected gunman, identified as Patrick Crusius, 21, had been forthcoming and “volunteered most of the evidence” that the police have.
The suspected gunman drove about 10 or 11 hours from Allen, Tex., a Dallas suburb, to El Paso, Mr. Allen said, and became lost in the border city.
“He found his way to the Walmart because we understand he was hungry,” Mr. Allen said.
At the news conference, the authorities identified the victims as Andre Pablo Anchondo, 23; Jordan Anchondo, 24; Arturo Benavidez, 60; Leonard Cipeda Campos, 41; Maria Flores, 77; Raul Flores, 77; Jorge Calvillo Garcia, 61; Adolfo Cerros Hernandez, 68; Alexander Gerhard Hoffman, 66; David Alvah Johnson, 63; Luis Alfonzo Juarez, 90; Maria Eugenia Legarrega Rothe, 58; Elsa Libera Marquez, 57; Maribel Loya 56; Ivan Hilierto Manzano, 46; Gloria Irma Marquez, 61; Margie Reckard, 63; Sarah Esther Regaldo Moriel, 66; Javier Rodriguez, 15; Teresa Sanchez, 82; Angelina Sliva-Elisbee, 86; Juan Velazquez, 77.
In some cases, family members and the Mexican consulate provided different spellings.
According to the Police Department, 13 victims were United States citizens, seven were Mexican citizens, one was German and one person’s nationality was undetermined.
Arturo Benavides, a bus driver and a United States Army veteran, was in line at a register when he was struck and killed, his relatives said. His wife, who survived, had been sitting on a bench near the bathroom. A couple, Jordan and Andre Anchondo, were shopping with their 2-month-old baby, relatives said. The baby survived with two broken fingers, likely caused after his mother shielded him with her body.
To many here, El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, on the other side of the border, are a shared community that happens to straddle two countries. It’s a place where Spanish is spoken everywhere, and it is not uncommon to see large trucks with American and Mexican flags fluttering side by side from the back.
The attack was a reminder of the undercurrent of the attention that has come to El Paso as thousands of migrants have illegally crossed the southwestern border into the United States. Many in the city linked the suspect’s words to Mr. Trump’s rhetoric and broader animosity toward immigrants.
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Since the massacre, the Walmart has mostly remained sealed off, the parking lot still crammed with the cars belonging to those who had been shopping when the gunman, identified as Patrick Crusius, 21, stormed the store.
Many residents said they condemned the hateful and racist message spewed by the gunman in a manifesto that railed against immigration and a “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” They mourned, too, a punctured sense of safety the city has long cherished. And there was talk of resilience, of somehow emerging stronger.
But Laura Linggi, who has lived in El Paso for more than three decades, said she was haunted by the knowledge that she might know at least one of the victims.
“Even though it is a big city,” she said, “it’s a small community.”
The Dayton police are still searching for a motive.
Richard Biehl, the Dayton police chief, said on Monday morning that investigators were far from concluding what had motivated the suspected gunman in the Dayton attack to kill his sister, injure their mutual friend, and fatally shoot eight others outside a bar, before he was killed by the police.
“It seems to just defy believability that he would shoot his own sister, but it’s also hard to believe he didn’t recognize that was his sister, so we just don’t know,” Chief Biehl said.
Investigators are trying to learn more about the relationships among the suspect, identified by the police as Connor Betts; his sister, Megan Betts; and the mutual friend, who is being treated for a gunshot wound in his lower torso. His name has not been released.
The three drove to the Oregon entertainment district in Dayton together on Saturday night, and then separated, although they remained in touch. The police have said there was no indication that the sister or mutual friend knew that Mr. Betts was armed.
The gunman fatally shot one person in an alleyway before turning his fire on his sister and their friend, the police have said. At least 27 people were wounded, including 14 who were shot; the rest had cuts and injuries from the stampede of fleeing people.
Mr. Betts had purchased his AR-15-style rifle legally online from Texas, and had it shipped to a gun store in or near Dayton, the police said, adding that it had been modified with a pistol brace to improve stability.
He had a drum magazine that could hold 100 rounds, the police said, and enough magazines to hold up to 250 rounds of ammunition. He fired at least 41 shots, Chief Biehl said. Six officers fired a total of 65 rounds at the gunman, killing him as he tried to enter a bar, where many people had taken refuge when the shooting began.
The chief said that, based on the information currently available, “we are not seeing any indication of race being a motive.”
Nine people were killed in Dayton. ‘I don’t know why I’m surprised,’ a mourner says.
At a vigil in Dayton less than 24 hours after the shooting, the mood was a blend of sorrow and shock.
People, even strangers, grasped each other in long, tear-shuddered hugs. Old friends of those who died stood alongside those who had escaped gunfire.
“I don’t know why I’m surprised,” said Sara Quiñones, 44, a regular in the district, rubbing tears from her eyes. “This happens all the time.”
One resident who would frequently go out in the Oregon District when she was younger said mass shootings are “being normalized.”
“Over the last two years, and definitely the last year, it’s unfortunately been in the back of my mind: When will it come here?” said the resident, Clara Jackson, 56.
From a stage in the middle of the street, religious leaders prayed, doves were released and a singer led the crowd in “Amazing Grace.” When Ohio’s governor, Mike DeWine, a Republican, approached the microphone the mood shifted, with loud shouts imploring him to “Do something!” The group also chanted: “What do we want? Gun control!”
On Monday, the governor’s office said Mr. DeWine would announce on Tuesday “proposals to address gun violence and mental health issues.” Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, who visited with police officials in Dayton on Monday, declined to say what those proposals would be. But he said he understood why residents had yelled at the governor.
“I think when something like this happens, we all want to do something,” said Mr. Husted, a Republican. “And for them to express their feelings is a perfectly appropriate thing to do.”
The Dayton gunman made a ‘hit list’ in high school, a fellow student says.
When Mr. Betts was a student at Bellbrook High School, he was accused of making a “hit list” that threatened fellow students, most or all of them girls, with violence or sexual violence, former students said.
Ben Seitz, 25, recalled Mr. Betts as “a pretty dark kid” who was “definitely into some gruesome stuff.” Mr. Seitz, who was a year ahead of Mr. Betts in school, remembered him making inappropriate remarks about girls.
“He definitely stuck out,” Mr. Seitz said.
Mr. Betts became notorious at the school after news of the list circulated, said Mr. Seitz, whose girlfriend at the time was on that list.
“I was friends with a lot of the girls in my class” who were on the list, Mr. Seitz said. “They were obviously very, very scared.”
Another former Bellbrook student, Theo Gainey, recalled Mr. Betts being “arrested on the school bus” for making threats. Mr. Gainey, 25, who said he was on the bus when it happened, said that Mr. Betts had to leave school for the rest of that year. When he returned, “the threat thing followed him, and people didn’t want to hang out with him,” Mr. Gainey said.
Chief Biehl of the Dayton police said on Monday that he could not confirm reports of the “hit list,” and added that even if the reports prove to be true, he would be wary about making any connections to the shooting.
“I’m a little bit reluctant, even if there’s such evidence, to interpret it 10 years later as somehow, this is indicative of what happened yesterday,” he said.
Mr. Betts appeared to have had few interactions with the local police as an adult. In his hometown of Bellbrook, a suburb southeast of Dayton, the Police Department released reports on Monday showing he had been pulled over for driving with expired registration in 2014 and arrested on suspicion of drunk driving in 2016.
In the drunk driving incident, the arresting officer said he pulled Mr. Betts over for traffic violations at 3 a.m. and smelled alcohol in the car. Mr. Betts, who had a passenger, told the officer he had consumed two rum and Cokes. The police report described Mr. Betts as talkative, polite and cooperative. He pleaded guilty the next year to a lesser charge of having physical control of a vehicle while under the influence.
Mr. Seitz, who moved away from Bellbrook soon after the “hit list” incident, recalled a large police presence at the school after the list was discovered. He said he did not remember seeing Mr. Betts again. But when Mr. Seitz heard reports on Sunday that his former classmate had been involved in the mass shooting, he said he was not especially surprised.
“One of my friends texted me that it was Connor Betts,” Mr. Seitz said. “I was like, ‘Oh, that kind of makes sense, unfortunately.’”
Democratic candidates for president have criticized Mr. Trump for his response to the shootings.
Democratic candidates for president excoriated President Trump and his Republican allies anew on Monday in frustration over rampant gun violence, the racist and divisive culture they accuse him of fostering, and his early-morning suggestion to tie background checks on gun purchasers to immigration legislation.
After a taxing weekend filled with frayed nerves, anger and tears, Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio and former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas, who hail from the states where the attacks were carried out, strongly condemned Republican inaction.
Speaking with CNN Monday morning from Dayton, Ohio, where one of the shootings killed nine people, Mr. Ryan demanded that Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, “do something.”
“People are getting killed in the streets in America and nobody is acting,” Mr. Ryan said.
8chan has gone dark after a networking company cut it off.
8chan, the online message board where a hate-filled, anti-immigrant manifesto was posted minutes before the El Paso shooting, vanished from the internet on Monday and remained offline several hours later, after a San Francisco company decided to stop providing vital network services to the site.
The forum went dark at about midnight in California. After the move was announced late Sunday by the company, Cloudflare, 8chan confirmed the change on Twitter and warned that an interruption in the site’s connectivity would probably follow.
The screed was posted minutes before the El Paso shooting, and the authorities said Sunday it was written by the suspected gunman. At least three mass shootings this year — including the mosque killings in Christchurch, New Zealand, and the synagogue shooting in Poway, Calif. — have been announced in advance on 8chan, which has become known as a forum for racist views.
The El Paso attack “underscores the continued threat” of domestic terrorism, the F.B.I. says.
Law enforcement officials said the massacre in El Paso was being investigated as a case of domestic terrorism and as a hate crime. In a statement on Sunday, the F.B.I. said that the attack “underscores the continued threat posed by domestic violence extremists and perpetrators of hate crimes.”
The agency said it remains concerned that “domestic violent extremists could become inspired by these and previous high-profile attacks to engage in similar acts of violence,” and asked that people remain vigilant and report anything they deem suspicious to the authorities.
Mexico has demanded protections for Mexicans in the United States.
Mexico demanded protections for Mexicans and Mexican-Americans living in the United States and threatened legal action on Sunday, a day after the shooting at an El Paso Walmart that left Mexican citizens among the dead and wounded.
Mexican authorities could seek to extradite the gunman on a terrorism charge and were planning legal action against the seller who provided the gunman with his weapon, said the foreign minister, Mr. Ebrard.
Campbell Robertson and Mitch Smith reported from Dayton, Ohio, and Rick Rojas from El Paso. Reporting was contributed by Eileen Sullivan from Washington; Elisabeth Malkin and Azam Ahmed from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico; Iliana Magra from London; Amy Harmon, Matt Stevens and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs from New York; and Sonia Chopra from Dayton. Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
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