A 24-year-old gunman from Allen was sentenced to 90 consecutive life sentences by a federal judge on Friday for massacring 23 people and injuring 22 others in an El Paso Walmart in 2019.
Patrick Crusius, a former Plano Senior High School and Collin College student, pleaded guilty earlier this year to 90 federal charges.
Nearly 50 of them were hate crime charges, including 23 counts of hate crimes resulting in death and 22 counts of hate crimes involving an attempt to kill.
The other half were 23 counts of use of a firearm to commit murder during and in relation to a crime of violence and 22 counts of use of a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence.
He could face the death penalty when he is tried in state court on capital murder charges at a later date.
U.S. District Judge David Guaderrama recommended that Crusius be incarcerated at a maximum security prison in Colorado.
Crusius said nothing after the sentencing and showed no emotion.
“We’ll be seeing you again, coward,” Dean Reckard, whose mother Margie Reckard was slain in the attack, yelled, according to the El Paso Times.
“No apologies, no nothing,” Reckard added, according to the Associated Press.
The shooter’s attorney Joe Spencer told the judge before the sentencing that Crusius has a “broken brain,” according to AP.
“Patrick’s thinking is at odds with reality … resulting in delusional thinking,” Spencer added.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Ian Hanna claimed that Crusius drove from the Dallas area to El Paso with no target in mind except for people of Hispanic descent.
“It was a strike against the very essence that makes this community special — its people,” Hanna said, according to El Paso Matters.
The EPT quoted Hanna as saying, “What happened was a cold, calculated scheme targeting immigrants and Hispanics. A shooting spree that spared no one. It was not a crime of passion. It was not an accident. It was a calculated act that he planned.”
Francisco Javier Rodriguez, whose son Javier Amir Rodriguez, 15, was the youngest victim, was one of 50 people who watched the sentencing in the courtroom. Others watched from monitors set up in a nearby overflow room.
“It is good that it is over,” Rodriguez said, according to the EPT. “Nothing he can say will bring my son back.”
Note: This article was updated on July 12, 2023, at 7:43 p.m. to include additional information about Crusius’ charges.
