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BY ANNIE GOWEN,

MARK BERMAN,

TIM CRAIG

AND HANNAH NATANSON

The 21-year-old man accused

of slaying 20 people in an El Paso

shopping center will be treated as

a domestic terrorist, authorities

said Sunday, adding that they are

seriously considering charging

him with federal hate crimes.

The suspect, Patrick Crusius,

from suburban Dallas, is prob-

ably the author of a rambling,

hate-filled manifesto posted on

the 8chan website shortly before

Saturday morning’s shooting, au-

thorities believe, but they are still

investigating. The manifesto ap-

peared to be written as a “re-

sponse to the Hispanic invasion

of Te xas” with denunciations of

“race mixers” and “haters of our

collective values.”

Those who knew Crusius de-

scribed him as “strange” and “off-

putting,” with few friends. A Twit-

ter account under his name, cre-

ated in 2016, uses the handle

@outsider609.

On Sunday, it was still unclear

why Crusius made the nearly

10-hour trip from his hometown

to El Paso.

Wearing protective headgear

and brandishing an assault-style

rifle, the gunman strode into the

store just after 10 a.m. Saturday,

authorities say, and began shoot-

ing at random, sending shoppers

fleeing in panic and turning a

store crowded with parents and

children buying school supplies

into a bloody hellscape.

It was the first of two mass

shootings to shake the country

within a 24-hour period. Early

Sunday morning, officials said a

SEE EL PASO ON A

BY KEVIN WILLIAMS,

HANNAH KNOWLES,

HANNAH NATANSON

AND PETER WHORISKEY

dayton, ohio — In the hours
before the mass shooting, Con-
nor and Megan Betts, brother
and sister, drove together in the
family’s 2007 Corolla to visit this
city’s historic Oregon District, an
area alive on a summer night
with restaurants, bars and night-
life.
Then, police said, they sepa-
rated.
It i s not clear what the woman,
22, did at that point. But her
brother, 24, donned a mask, body
armor and ear protection. Wield-
ing an “A R-15-like” weapon with
magazines containing 100
rounds, he set out on a street
rampage that, while it l asted only
about 30 seconds, claimed the
lives of nine people and injured
27 others.
Among the first to die was
Megan Betts. A male companion
was injured.
Many more might have died,
officials said, but police patrol-
ling the area saw people fleeing
and quickly “neutralized” Con-
nor Betts — he was shot to death
— as he was about to enter a bar
where dozens of people had run
to hide. A bouncer was i njured by
shrapnel. At least six officers
fired at Betts.
“A s a mayor, this is a day that
we all dread happening,” Dayton
Mayor Nan Whaley said during a
news conference Sunday morn-
ing.
The attack came less than a
day after a man with a high-pow-
ered weapon killed 20 people in
El Paso and a week after a
SEE DAYTON ON A

BY PHILIP RUCKER

President Trump h as relentless-
ly used his bully pulpit to decry
Latino migration as “an invasion
of our country.” H e has d emonized
undocumented immigrants as
“thugs” and “animals.” He has de-
fended the detention of migrant
children, hundreds of whom have
been held in squalor. And he has
warned that without a wall t o pre-
vent people from crossing t he bor-
der from Mexico, America would
no longer be A merica.
“How do you stop these people?
You can’t,” Trump lamented at a
May rally in Panama City Beach,
Fla. Someone in the crowd yelled
back one idea: “Shoot them.” The
audience of thousands cheered
and Trump smiled. Shrugging off
the suggestion, he quipped, “Only
in the Panhandle can you get away
with that statement.”
On Saturday, a 21-year-old
white man entered a shopping
center in El Paso, according to
police, and allegedly decided to
“shoot them.” Inside a crowded
Walmart in a vibrant border city
visited d aily by thousands of Mexi-
cans, a late-morning back-to-
school shopping s cene turned i nto
a pool of blood. Twenty people
died, a nd dozens were wounded.
After yet another mass slaying,
SEE TRUMP ON A

President’s

rhetoric

looms over

Tex. rampage

BY DEVLIN BARRETT

The FBI insists it is fully en-

gaged in combating the threat of

violence from white suprema-

cists, but some former federal

officials charge that the govern-

ment is still coming up short in

the face of a strain of American

terrorism that now seems resur-

gent.

The weekend massacre at a

Walmart and shopping center in

El Paso has focused public debate

once again on the issue, after

federal prosecutors called it an

act of domestic terrorism.

In recent congressional testi-

mony, senior FBI officials said

they were conducting about 850

domestic terrorism investiga-

tions — a decrease from a year

earlier, when there were roughly

1,000. The category covers more

than just racist violence, but offi-

cials say such motivations are a

large part of their domestic ter-

rorism caseload.

Ye t by other measures, the

threat of white nationalist vio-

lence appears to be rising. Be-

tween October and June, there

were about 100 arrests of domes-

tic terrorism suspects — and if

that trend continues, the total for

2019 would outpace the prior

year, when there were about 120

SEE VIOLENCE ON A

FBI e≠orts

against racist

violence face

skepticism

BY MARC FISHER

In El Paso, Dayton and Chica-

go, a weekend of horrific gun

violence s eemed on the surface to

be another spasm of disconnect-

ed mayhem, people taking the

lives of others almost at random.

But on closer examination, the

attacks served to illustrate how

America’s lone-wolf shooters

aren’t r eally alone.

Whether the proximate cause

was political or personal, wheth-

er it grew out of ideological in-

doctrination, mental illness or

some toxic blend of factors that

left shooters isolated and dam-

aged, each attack demonstrated a

troubling disorder festering in

modern America.

The 21-year-old man who al-

legedly murdered 20 people do-

ing their S aturday shopping in El

Paso appears to have taken pains

to post a manifesto that leaned

heavily on the v irulently anti-im-

migrant rhetoric that inspired

recent mass shootings in New

Zealand and California, authori-

ties said — though they were still

working to confirm its authentic-

ity.

The suspect, Patrick Crusius,

did not appear to be part of any

organized group, but the four-

page screed posted minutes be-

fore he opened fire parroted the

extreme white supremacist

ideology known as “the great re-

placement” — the idea that new-

SEE SHOOTINGS ON A

Mass shootings again reveal

viral ‘contagion’ of violence

BY ELI ROSENBERG,

HEATHER LONG,

GRIFF WITTE

AND ALEX HINOJOSA

el paso — It was the second-to-

last weekend before the start of

school, and 1,000 customers had

crammed into the Walmart Su-

percenter o n Gateway Boulevard,

where pens, notebooks and cray-

ons were all on sale. Children

filled the aisles, trying on new

backpacks a nd clothes.

The shoppers had come from

both sides o f the b order that sepa-

rates this Te xas city from Ciudad

Juarez, Mexico. Stocking up on

back-to-school supplies is just

one among many activities that

draw the two communities to-

gether, making them f eel like one.

Patrick Crusius, 21, had come

from much farther, police would

later say, d riving nearly a cross the

state. He w as there, t hey said, not

to shop, b ut t o kill.

Just after 10 a.m. on Saturday

is when Crusius is thought to

have posted an anti-immigrant

screed on 8chan, an online mes-

saging b oard known f or its r acist,

bigoted a nd anti-Semitic c ontent,

authorities s aid.

Over the next hour, gunfire

would send adults cowering be-

hind toy machines and panicked

children fleeing for their lives

across a parking lot.

By the time Crusius surren-

dered to authorities, 20 people

SEE SCENE ON A

Survivors recall confusion,

horror amid rush of gunfire

Battle warning The Tr ump administration

has launched an effort to head off a Turkish

invasion of northeast Syria that it expects will

come within the next two weeks. A

Hong Kong protests A general strike

paralyzed transportation networks and shut

down scores of businesses. A

METRO

Pet projects

Erica Eriksdotter, a

Reston artist, spends her

days painting portraits of

deceased or dying

animals. Grief counselors

say she’s helping owners

get over their loss. B

In the news

THE NATION

Data from ActBlue, an

online fundraising plat­

form, offers a look at

how grass­roots donors

are shaping the Demo­

cratic primary. A

President Trump’s

pick for acting director

of the Bureau of Land

Management favors

opening up federal

lands to mining, oil ex­

ploration, grazing and

recreation. A

THE WORLD

Nicaraguan President

Daniel Ortega is clamp­

ing down on La Prensa,

one of Latin America’s

most storied independ­

ent newspapers. A

Iran said it seized an­

other foreign vessel sus­

pected of smuggling fuel

in the Persian Gulf, add­

ing to tensions over inci­

dents involving oil tank­

ers in the region. A

THE REGION

Delivery drivers jock­

eying for parking on

D.C. streets can now re­

serve curb space in ad­

vance — part of the

city’s attempts to limit

double­parked vehicles

that block traffic, bike

lanes and crosswalks. B

A progressive Baptist

church will close its

doors and give $1 mil­

lion to local groups. B1 CONTENT © 2019

The Washington Post / Year 142, No. 243

2 cities, 13 hours, 29 deaths

In El Paso, the suspect accused of killing 20 at a shopping center

is speaking with police and could face federal hate crime charges

In Dayton, a masked gunman in body armor kills nine people —

including his sister — in 30 seconds before police fatally shoot him

JOHN MINCHILLO/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Mourners gather at a vigil Sunday in Dayton, Ohio. Many more could have died there early Sunday, but police were already in the area.

MICHAEL ROBINSON CHAVEZ/THE WASHINGTON POST

Blessed Sacrament Parish in El Paso was the site of a vigil Sunday. The country was shaken by the back-to-back shootings.

Republican response: Prayers,

but no solutions, are offered. A

8chan: Shut down the venomous

website, its founder urges. A

Critic’s Notebook: It’s difficult
to ignore the war on our soil. C

Margaret Sullivan: Rote coverage
of tragedies is a disservice. C