Man who fatally shot 23 at El Paso Walmart set to plead guilty to murder nearly 6 years on

DALLAS — The long-running criminal case against a Texas gunman who killed 23 people in a racist attack targeting Hispanic shoppers at a Walmart in El Paso in 2019 is on the verge of coming to a close. Patrick Crusius, 26, is expected to plead guilty Monday to capital murder and receive a sentence of life in prison with no possibility of parole for the massacre near the U.S.-Mexico border. El Paso County District Attorney James Montoya said last month he was offering Crusius a plea deal and that he wouldn't face the death penalty on the state charge. Crusius has already been sentenced to 90 consecutive life sentences in federal court after pleading guilty in 2023 to hate crime and weapons charges. Under the Biden administration, federal prosecutors also took the death penalty off the table. Crusius is expected to serve his time in a state prison. Crusius initially was arrested by local authorities and will enter the custody of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice if he is sentenced on the state charges, a spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons said. Here's what to know about the deadly attack on Aug. 3, 2019, and its aftermath: The attack Crusius was 21 years old when authorities say he drove for more than 10 hours from his home in suburban Dallas to El Paso and opened fire at the Walmart, which is popular with shoppers from Mexico and the U.S. Prosecutors have said Crusius was wearing earmuffs that muted the sound of gunfire when he began shooting people in the parking lot. He then moved inside the store and continued firing an AK-style rifle, cornering shoppers at a bank near the entrance where nine were killed before shooting at the checkout area and people in aisles. Exiting Walmart, he fired on a passing car, killing an elderly man and wounding his wife. Crusius was apprehended shortly after and confessed to officers who stopped him at an intersection, according to police. Targeting Hispanic shoppers In a posting to an online message board just before the massacre, Crusius, a white, community-college dropout, said the shooting was "in response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas." He said Hispanics were going to take over the government and economy. On social media, he appeared consumed by the nation's immigration debate, tweeting #BuildtheWall and posts praising the hard-line border policies of Republican President Donald Trump, who was in his first term at the time. After the shooting, Crusius told officers that he had targeted Mexicans. Joe Spencer, one of Crusius' attorneys, on Thursday described Crusius as "an individual with a broken brain." Spencer said Crusius has been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, which can be marked by hallucinations, delusions and mood swings. The victims The people who were killed ranged in age from a 15-year-old high school athlete to grandparents. They included immigrants and Mexican nationals who had crossed the U.S. border on routine shopping trips. They included Jordan Anchondo and Andre Anchondo, who were killed while shopping with their 2-month-old child, Paul, who survived. Authorities have said Jordan Anchondo shielded the baby from gunfire while her husband shielded them both. Guillermo "Memo" Garcia and his wife Jessica Coca Garcia were fundraising for their daughter's soccer team in the parking lot when they were both shot. She suffered leg wounds but recovered. He died from his injuries nearly nine months after the shooting, raising the death toll to 23. A week after the shooting, Coca Garcia rose from her wheelchair to give a speech across the road from the county jail where Crusius was being held. "Racism is something I always wanted to think didn't exist," she said. "Obviously, it does." A long-running court case Montoya said he decided to offer the plea deal because a majority of victims' relatives were eager for the case to be resolved. He acknowledged not all the families agreed. Montoya, a Democrat, said he supports the death penalty and believes Crusius deserves it, but the case might not have gone to trial until 2028 if his office had continued seeking the death penalty. When Montoya took office in January, he became the fourth district attorney to oversee the case in nearly six years. One of his predecessors resigned in 2022 under pressure over her handling of the case. He said the pandemic also caused delays. Stephanie Melendez, whose father, David Johnson, died shielding his wife and granddaughter, said she initially wanted Crusius to get the death penalty but as the case dragged on she wanted it to end. "I just wanted it to be over," Melendez said. "I was done reliving everything. I was done going to court for hours. I was done with the briefings that happened after that would last hours and it was just the same talk over and over again. We were just ready to be done with it all because, honestly, it's like reliving the trauma over and over again."