JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, July 3, 2025

1 killed, 3 hurt in shooting at El Paso, Texas shopping mall

by

868 days ago
20230216
Law enforcement agents are seen at an entrance of a shopping mall, Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2023, in El Paso, Texas. Police say one person was killed and three other people were wounded in a shooting at Cielo Vista Mall. One person has been taken into custody, El Paso police spokesperson Sgt. Robert Gomez said. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)

Law enforcement agents are seen at an entrance of a shopping mall, Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2023, in El Paso, Texas. Police say one person was killed and three other people were wounded in a shooting at Cielo Vista Mall. One person has been taken into custody, El Paso police spokesperson Sgt. Robert Gomez said. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)

One per­son was killed and three more were wound­ed Wednes­day in a shoot­ing at a shop­ping mall in El Pa­so, Texas, adding to the dozens of peo­ple al­ready killed this year in mass shoot­ings across the Unit­ed States.

El Pa­so po­lice said hours af­ter the gun­fire that two peo­ple had been tak­en in­to cus­tody, though de­tails of what led the shoot­ing re­mained un­clear.

In­ter­im po­lice chief Pe­ter Pacil­las said that Cielo Vista Mall was still con­sid­ered a crime scene, and that it would re­main locked down un­til au­thor­i­ties had com­plet­ed their in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Pacil­las stressed that the dan­ger had passed.

“There is no more dan­ger. I want to re­peat that: There is no more dan­ger to the pub­lic,” Pacil­las said.

The shoot­ing hap­pened in a busy shop­ping area and across a large park­ing lot from a Wal­mart where 23 peo­ple were killed in a racist at­tack tar­get­ing His­pan­ic peo­ple in 2019. El Pa­so — with a large­ly Lati­no pop­u­la­tion of about 700,000 peo­ple — sits on the U.S. bor­der with Mex­i­co, where res­i­dents of both coun­tries cross fre­quent­ly.

“To­day’s shoot­ing at the Cielo Vista Mall has brought back trau­mat­ic mem­o­ries for many of us. Please know you are not alone,” De­mo­c­ra­t­ic U.S. Rep. Veron­i­ca Es­co­bar, whose dis­trict in­cludes El Pa­so, said on Twit­ter.

She urged any­one who need­ed it to reach out to the city’s cri­sis help line.

The Unit­ed States has seen dozens of peo­ple killed in mass shoot­ings so far in 2023, most re­cent­ly Mon­day at Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty, where three stu­dents were killed and five more were wound­ed. In Jan­u­ary, 11 peo­ple were killed in the Los An­ge­les-area city of Mon­terey Park as they wel­comed the Lu­nar New Year at a dance hall pop­u­lar with old­er Asian Amer­i­cans.

Pacil­las said the two peo­ple tak­en in­to cus­tody af­ter Wednes­day’s shoot­ing as well as all of the vic­tims were males.

Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical Cen­ter in El Pa­so said in a state­ment that two gun­shot vic­tims be­ing treat­ed there were in crit­i­cal con­di­tion.

The con­di­tion of the third vic­tim was not im­me­di­ate­ly known.

Po­lice ear­li­er said the shoot­ing was re­port­ed in the shop­ping mall’s food court.

Au­thor­i­ties set up a re­uni­fi­ca­tion cen­tre at a near­by high school, where those af­fect­ed by the shoot­ing could re­con­nect with loved ones.

The FBI, which is as­sist­ing El Pa­so po­lice in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, set up a web­site where the pub­lic can share pho­tos or video from the shoot­ing: www.fbi.gov/cielo­vis­ta­mall­shoot­ing.

Re­pub­li­can Gov. Greg Ab­bott said in a tweet Wednes­day night that he had spo­ken to the may­or of El Pa­so and of­fered as­sis­tance from the Texas De­part­ment of Pub­lic and Safe­ty and the Texas Di­vi­sion of Emer­gency Man­age­ment.

In 2022, more than 600 mass shoot­ings oc­curred in the U.S. in which at least four peo­ple were killed or wound­ed, ac­cord­ing to the Gun Vi­o­lence Archive. —EL PA­SO, Texas (AP)

United States of AmericaShootingInstagram


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored