Officials call El Paso shooting a domestic terrorism case, weigh hate crime charges
Source: Washington Post
EL PASO — The attack on a Walmart and shopping center here, during which a gunman killed 20 people and wounded dozens of others, is being viewed as a domestic terrorist attack, authorities said Sunday. Federal authorities are “seriously considering” bringing hate crime charges in the case, John F. Bash, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas, said Sunday.
Those charges could carry the death penalty. Local prosecutors also say they plan to seek a death sentence in the case. “We are treating it as a domestic terrorism case and we’re going to do what we do to terrorists in this country,” Bash said. “Which is deliver swift and certain justice.” Even as officials searched for more answers behind the violent rampage here, other investigators probed another shooting massacre in Dayton, Ohio, that ended with nine dead.
The shootings in Texas and Ohio sparked panic, grief and intense investigations as more public places were terrorized by a hail of bullets. The chaotic but grimly familiar scene of terror here was followed just hours later by the attack in Dayton, during which nine people were slain and more than two dozen injured, officials said.
It was a ghastly scene across America, with more than two dozen people killed in two shooting rampages over the course of a single tragic day. Another seven people were wounded early Sunday during a shooting in Chicago.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08/04/investigators-search-answers-after-gunman-kills-el-paso/?utm_term=.93383d5f4b3f&wpisrc=al_news__alert-national&wpmk=1
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