Starting the 'healing process': An end to Walmart mass shooter's racist evil in El Paso

Yahoo

20-04-2025

Albert Hernandez is eager to turn the page on a racist mass shooter who killed 23 people in El Paso, including his beloved sister and her husband. He now wants to focus on the future by resharing joyful stories about his family members.
"We get to close this chapter on the criminal case and what happened here in El Paso," said Albert Hernandez, whose sister Maribel Hernandez and brother-in-law Leo Campos were killed by a gunman in the Aug. 3, 2019 mass shooting.
"Now, we just want everyone to remember the victims and their families."
Maribel Hernandez, 56, and Campos, 41, had four adult kids. They were "the greatest people you could meet" and put family first, Albert Hernandez said.
"Leo was a really amazing guy. I tell many people, 'I don't know why it happened to him,' honestly," Albert Hernandez said. "She was a native El Pasoan. She was just incredible … We miss them every day."
He is eager to see the gunman fade from the news following five years of coverage of the seventh deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
The gunman, 26-year-old Patrick Crusius, is expected to plead guilty Monday, April 21, to one count of capital murder of multiple persons and 22 counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. The Allen, Texas man used an assault-style rifle to kill 23 people shopping for groceries at a popular El Paso Walmart.
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After lots of legal wrangling — described by one victim's family as a "circus" — the gunman will face a sentencing and again hear the heartbreaking stories of the harm he did in El Paso.
El Paso District Attorney James Montoya dropped the death penalty as part of a plea agreement. The gunman waived his right to an appeal and a judge will again order him to spend the rest of his life behind bars.
The resolution of the nearly six-year-old case only brings "half justice" to the victims and their families, Albert Hernandez said.
"Of course, we're very disappointed with the DA's office," he said. "We wanted them to (seek) the death penalty. We are happy because it will now be over, but we feel that we didn't get full justice."
The hearing is set for 10 a.m. Monday on the third floor of the Enrique Moreno County Courthouse in Downtown El Paso. Judge Sam Medrano of the 409th District Court is presiding over the conclusion of the case.
Victim impact statements are expected to start after 1 p.m. in the courthouse. Victim impact statements are expected to last at least two days. Forty-nine people have signed up to speak at the hearing heading into the Easter holiday weekend.
Montoya declined to speak on the plea and sentencing hearing, saying he will address the El Paso community after victim impact statements are given.
After meeting with families, Montoya on March 25 announced the dramatic shift in the state's handling of the case. He emphasized the gunman will "die in a prison cell."
More: El Paso Walmart mass shooter no longer facing death penalty, plea hearing expected in April
Hernandez's family, like others in El Paso, expressed disappointment in Montoya's decision, but acknowledged it is time to move on from the suffering. Albert Hernandez wrote a book entitled "El Paso's Darkest Day" to cope with the devastating loss.
Hernandez, a former corrections officer, said he knows what lies in store for the gunman.
"I dealt with people like him when I worked in a prison," he said. "I've talked to my family and other people, and I keep telling them, I keep assuring them, he (the gunman) is going to the right place. I guarantee the victims, he's not going to a very nice place."
"He's going to a very bad place."
While there is disagreement about Montoya's decision on the death penalty, it had become clear the state's case against the shooter had been mishandled. Former District Attorney Yvonne Rosales resigned from office under pressure for her incompetence in the case.
Former District Attorney Bill Hicks tried to save the state's case, but he quickly found himself mired in nonstop challenges over the dealing of the evidence and prosecutors' conduct in the handling of the case.
In his successful campaign for district attorney, Montoya never made it public that he was going to drop the death penalty.
Montoya said he was acting out of compassion for the families.
More: El Paso Walmart mass shooter appears for first state court appearance since 2019
"Continual delays due to the handling of this case before I arrived in office have left them in limbo," Montoya said in a statement.
The new district attorney concluded: "Now, no one in this community will ever have to hear the perpetrator's name ever again. No more hearings. No more appeals. He will die in prison.'
Medrano's hearing will end the legal saga in the deadliest and highest-profile criminal case in El Paso's history.
"Our focus must shift entirely to the needs of the survivors, the victims' families and the El Paso community," the gunman's attorney Joe Spencer told the El Paso Times late last week. "There are no winners in this case, but this is the right decision. This decision brings judicial finality to at least start some of the healing process."
The state's case against the gunman was stalled for nearly six years because of the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in late 2019, the retirement of former District Attorney Jaime Esparza, the federal case against the gunman being handled first, and more than 60 pretrial motions being filed by defense attorneys and prosecutors.
More: Major hearing delayed again in death penalty case against El Paso Walmart shooter
To this day, Medrano was never able to set a firm trial date.
"We really had a combination of a lot of issues that delayed it for so long," Spencer said.
The gunman was originally indicted by Esparza in 2019. Esparza did not seek reelection in 2020. Esparza declined to comment on the pending resolution of the case.
In a statement after Montoya's announcement, Hicks held firm in his efforts to get the death penalty against the gunman, but ultimately failed to get the case to trial.
'I am disappointed that the Walmart shooter will not face a jury for his crimes but the decision to move forward with a trial or to enter a plea agreement is completely within the discretion of the district attorney and it is totally DA Montoya's decision at this point, not mine," Hicks said. "I respect how difficult it must have been to make this decision."
The gunman drove nearly 700 miles from Allen, Texas, to El Paso on Aug. 3, 2019 to attack Mexicans, who he claimed were invading the U.S., according to court documents and testimony in the gunman's federal trial.
He parked at the Walmart located at 7101 Gateway Blvd. West in the Cielo Vista area in East El Paso. He got out of his vehicle and began shooting people in the parking lot. He continued into Walmart, where he fatally shot nine people in a bank inside the store. He then continued, shooting another nine in the aisles of the store. In total, he fatally shot 23 people and injured dozens more.
Shortly after the shooting, he surrendered to a Texas Department of Public Safety state trooper, confessing he was the mass shooter.
Spencer, who maintained regular communication with the gunman, claims his client was radicalized by President Donald Trump and Texas Republican leaders. The gunman also suffered from mental health issues, including schizoaffective disorder, he said.
"Patrick believed that he was acting at the direction of the president at the time," Spencer said. "He thought it was his duty to stop the invasion because that's what he perceived the president was telling him."
"This is really the crux of the senselessness. A young man with a severely broken brain unable to really determine what reality is and what was absorbed through toxic rhetoric."
More: El Paso Walmart mass shooter's attorney file motion claiming 'outrageous conduct' by DA
Spencer, a strong opponent of the death penalty who vowed to fight to save his client's life, said Republican rhetoric villainizing Hispanics led to the mass shooting.
"As a society, we must confront the environment that allowed such hatred to fester and ignite," Spencer said. "We must recognize that words have power. That rhetoric that demonizes or dehumanizes or promotes any sort of fear based on ethnicity or national origin."
"It's not speech. It's actually fuel and the hate that motivated this attack did not arise in a vacuum. It was really fed by the narratives readily available in our current political discourse and online spaces."
Albert Hernandez is not buying that mental health issues caused the gunman to attack innocent people in the binational massacre. Eight of the victims were Mexican citizens, most from Juárez.
"Can you imagine if every person who had a mental illness would do something like that?" Hernandez asked. "Can you imagine what this world would be like? He knew what he was doing."
The last unanswered question remaining in the gunman's fate is where he will serve his prison sentence. He pleaded guilty to the mass shooting in federal court and was sentenced to 90 consecutive life sentences. Senior U.S. District Judge David C. Guaderrama recommended the gunman do his time at ADX Florence supermax federal prison near Florence, Colorado.
The gunman is currently in state custody. He was first arrested by a state trooper, therefore, the state sentence could be served before the federal sentence.
Hicks' administration agreed for the gunman to serve his federal sentence first. Montoya has not publicly announced if he will request the gunman serve his federal prison sentence first. The decision will ultimately come down to the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Spencer said.
"We believe the supermax prison is the best place for him," Spencer said. "For one reason, it would be on the nickel of the federal government versus the state. The other thing is that he would be in a more secure, the most secure, federal penitentiary in the country."
More: El Paso Walmart mass shooter likely to go to trial in 2026, court documents show
The gunman is being held in isolation at the El Paso County Jail — locked away from the jail's general population. He has received threats from gangs in El Paso, Spencer said. No further details were available on which gangs and what type of threats were made.
"We do believe that he is at risk if he goes down to TDCJ (Texas Department of Criminal Justice) because of the notoriety of the case and gang members who have put a hit on him," Spencer said.
If El Pasoans are expecting the gunman to apologize for unleashing evil into the community, it will not happen.
Spencer confirmed there are no plans for the gunman to speak during his hearing.
Aaron Martinez covers the criminal justice system for the El Paso Times. He may be reached at [e-mail] or on X/Twitter @AMartinezEPT.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: Walmart mass shooter to plead guilty, El Pasoans finally reach closure