New Delhi:
A shooting in Texas left at least 20 people dead and about 30 injured on Saturday. The massacre happened at a Walmart store near the Cielo Vista Mall, a few miles from the US-Mexican border. At least one suspect was taken into custody after the shooting in the border city of El Paso, triggering fear and panic among weekend shoppers as well as widespread condemnation. Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor of Texas, confirmed that there had been up to 20 casualties in the shooting at the Cielo Vista Mall after local television networks had reported similar numbers. “We have between 15 and 20 casualties, we don’t know the number of fatalities,” Patrick told Fox News.
The suspect has been named by US media as Patrick Crusius, a resident of Dallas-area city of Allen.
It was the second fatal shooting in less than a week at a Walmart store in the US and comes after a mass shooting in California last weekend.
El Paso Mayor Dee Margo acknowledged that there had been a number of deaths after gunfire was first heard around 10 am.
“I can’t confirm the number of fatalities. But there are fatalities,” he told CNN.
“It is a tragedy and I don’t want to comment until I have full information. It is a tragedy, I’m just so torn up about it.” Margo said three suspects were in custody, though police spokesman Sergeant Robert Gomez said he could confirm only one suspect in custody at the moment.
A witness who gave her name as Vanessa said she had just pulled into the parking lot at Walmart and “all of a sudden you heard what sounded like fireworks, really loud fireworks.”
“You could hear the pops, one right after another and at that point as I was turning, I saw a lady, seemed she was coming out of Walmart, headed to her car. She had her groceries in her cart and I saw her just fall,” she told Fox News.
