• Shooting in a supermarket in El Paso. Media: "At least 18 dead". Stop a person
  • Shooting at a festival in California, victims and wounded. The killer also killed
  • Christchurch Massacre. Erdogan shows again the killer video. Premier New Zealand: we will reply
  • New Zealand, massacre in two mosques in Christchurch: 49 dead and dozens injured

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04 August 2019

A double attack within a few hours. Bursts of shots fired with heavy weapons, bodies on the ground in pools of blood. It is a weekend of terror that lived in the United States, in El Paso, in Texas, and in Dayton, Ohio. The blind madness of two killers caused a massacre: at least 20 people died at the Walmart supermarket in the town on the border with Mexico; nine, however, the victims in the Midwest, where the killer opened fire in a bar, before being killed in turn. Dozens injured, while controversy has already begun over the possession of weapons in the USA, for many all too easy.

The assault on the El Paso Walmart
In El Paso, it's just past ten o'clock in the morning when a man, Patrick Crusius, originally from Allen, near Dallas, breaks into a shopping mall. It is the Vista Sky, the most popular and most visited in the city. Crusius has a Kalashnikov in his hand. He is alone. He wears a black T-shirt, light cargo pants, sunglasses and headphones to dampen the sound of the blows. Shoot in an indiscriminate burst for an hour. People, in a panic, run, seek shelter, hide as they can; screams and cries. Someone finds the way out and leaves, while the other shops in the mall lower the shutters. Others remain trapped, at the same time as police officers, army men, even the FBI arrive at the scene. From Airway Boulevard to Hawkins Boulevard, the entire area north of highway 10, not far from the international airport of El Paso, is cordoned off by the authorities. Meanwhile, Crusius continues to shoot. Twenty people are killed and among them four children.



The news of the massacre quickly arrive in Nevada. Here, on the stage of the Forum of the American Federation of State, there is Beto O'Rourke, the Democratic candidate running for the White House, which is precisely in El Paso. O'Rourke immediately called the family, interrupted the electoral campaign: "I have to go home, I want to be close to my people," he says, reaffirming the police appeals to stay away from the scene of the shooting. Crusius is stopped only at noon. Acting alone, the agents, investigating a possible "hate crime", a crime that US president Donald Trump defines "a cowardly act" on Twitter, will confirm.

The suprematist manifesto
The killer is recognized as the author of a poster posted on the web two years ago, in 2017, where he says he hates Hispanics. And just many Hispanic citizens figure among the victims of his madness, in a city in these months at the center of the crisis of migrants in the US, not far from the terrible detention facility of Clint, where children are kept in cages.

The post just before the shooting: "Response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas"
"This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas," reads one of the passages in the unsigned poster, entitled The Inconvenient Truth , posted online twenty minutes before the shooting. Investigators are trying to figure out if it was written by Patrick Crusius. In the document, the author claims to support the killer of Christchurch mosques (the white supremacist Brenton Tarrant) and his manifesto.

On the Twitter profile pro-Trump content
Crusius's twitter profile featured retweets of President Donald Trump's statements, as well as posts in favor of the Republican and, above all, his efforts to build an anti-migrant wall on the border with Mexico. The US media write this, pointing out that the account has been closed.

The prosecution will request the death penalty
The state of Texas will demand the death penalty for Cruisis. This was announced by the district attorney who has jurisdiction in the area where the massacre was committed. Investigators classify the attack as a case of "internal terrorism".

A few hours pass and the nightmare repeats itself in Ohio
In Dayton the police are alerted in the middle of the night, around one, local time. Someone reports gunshots outside a bar in an Oregon district. It is the district of pubs, restaurants and nightclubs in the city. The police arrive in a few moments. The area is evacuated and cordoned off. To witness the horror of yet another massacre are above all the images posted on social media by some witnesses. People run wild, terrified, while the sound of shots fired by an assault rifle is heard.

9 people killed in less than a minute. His sister was also among the victims
Jae Williams, a witness contacted by the BBC, said he was witnessing a rapper's performance when the evacuation was ordered. "I was in shock," he said, still shaken. "We all left quickly. We were ordered to avoid the Oregon area. I got into my car, I saw policemen and ambulances" everywhere.

The killer, identified as 24-year-old Connor Betts, was killed by police after murdering nine people, including his sister Megan, 22. "It was neutralized in less than a minute by the police, but in that short time it managed to kill nine people and injure another 27," said the city's mayor, Nan Whaley, adding that 15 of the wounded were able to leave the hospital .

According to CBS, Betts had no criminal record. From his Linkedin page it appears that he was a psychology student enrolled at Sinclair Community College. In the past he had done some jobs, one of them at a gas station. The FBI and local authorities executed a search warrant at Betts' family home in Bellbrook, about 25 miles south of Dayton.

The killer would not have acted alone
According to the Dayton Daily News, he would not have acted alone and security forces would be looking for a second man, suspected of being involved in the shooting. The suspect would have left the area aboard a dark jeep. The Dayton massacre is the third in a few days. Just a week ago a 19-year-old Italian-Iranian, with supremacist sympathies, had opened fire on the crowd at the Garlic Festival in Gilroy, California, killing three people, including a 6-year-old boy and a 13-year-old teenager.

Trump: there is no place for hatred in the US
US President Donald Trump said "there is no place for hatred in our country", after two violent massacres where 29 people died. "We have to stop them, this thing has been going on for years," said the president of New Jersey. There is a problem of "mental illness", he added. Trump then announced a speech for Monday.