Racist gunman pleads guilty to capital murder, avoids death penalty over Walmart massacre (2025)

The racist gunman who killed 23 people at a crowded supermarket near the Mexico border was sentenced to life in prison without parole Monday, April 21, after admitting capital murder in one of the deadliest shootings in US history. Patrick Crusius, who struck at a Walmart in the majority-Hispanic Texas city of El Paso in 2019, pleaded guilty at a state court as part of a deal that enabled him to avoid the death penalty.

The 26-year-old white supremacist was already serving 90 consecutive life terms over hate crimes convictions handed down last year in federal court. Clad in a bulletproof vest, Crusius stared straight ahead as the El Paso County District Attorney James Montoya named his victims.

"You came to inflict terror, to take innocent lives, and to shatter a community that had done nothing but stand for kindness, unity and love," District Judge Sam Medrano told him. "You slaughtered fathers, mothers, sons and daughters."

Crusius drove 660 miles (1,060 kilometers) from Allen, Texas, near Dallas to the Walmart Supercenter in El Paso with an AK-47-style assault rifle and 1,000 rounds of ammunition. He opened fire on people in the supermarket parking lot, killing 23 and wounding 22. He had uploaded a document to the internet entitled "The Inconvenient Truth" in which he said the attack was "a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas."

He said he was "defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement," referring to a far right conspiracy theory that other ethnic groups are "replacing" white Americans. When police showed up Crusius got out of his car and identified himself as the shooter. While in custody he told police he wanted to kill "Mexicans."

The massacre, which took place during Donald Trump's first term, ignited a debate on how the president's repeated criticism of immigrants influenced the behavior of people who supported him. At his July 2024 federal sentencing, then-assistant attorney general Kristen Clarke described the shooting as "one of the most horrific acts of white nationalist-driven violence in modern times."

It came two years after a gunman killed 58 people at an outdoor concert in Las Vegas and three years after a man murdered 49 at an LGBTQ nightclub in Orlando, Florida.