Tale of two shooters: How the El Paso and Dayton gunmen were fundamentally different from each other
Patrick Crusius drove more than 10 hours from his home in Allen, Texas, to El Paso on Saturday, August 3, before opening fire at a Walmart in the city.
The 21-year-old killed 20 people and injured at least 26 others before surrendering when he was confronted by officers on a sidewalk close to the scene. Police say they do not yet know how many bullets were fired or why the 21-year-old stopped firing.
Just as the nation was beginning to grasp the implications of yet another mass shooting and comprehend the senseless bloodshed, reports began emerging of yet another mass shooting, this time in Dayton, Ohio. It was the 250th in the country in 2019 alone.
A gunman in full tactical gear, including a bulletproof vest, mask, and hearing protection, carrying at least 100 rounds of ammunition, opened fire at the entrance of Ned Peppers Bar in the downtown Oregon Historic District after reportedly being denied entry.
Dayton Police Chief Richard Biehl said law enforcement officers responded to the scene and engaged the gunman 20 seconds after the shooting began. Within 30 seconds after the first shots were fired, the gunman was shot dead, but his spree had resulted in nine people dead and at least 27 others injured.
Soon after the shooting, the gunman was confirmed to be Connor Stephen Betts, a 24-year-old from Bellbrook, Ohio.
Both the El Paso and Dayton gunmen were young, white males, and had a reputation of being loners in their schools, but that's where the similarities end.
In the aftermath of the shootings, Democratic candidates were quick to lay the blame at the feet of President Donald Trump, stating that his language against minorities promoted racial division and violence. Indeed, among the 20 killed in the El Paso shooting, seven were Mexicans.
The suspicion that it was a hate crime was confirmed when authorities uncovered a four-page racist, anti-immigrant manifesto uploaded by Crusius just minutes before the shooting. The manifesto echoed a conspiracy theory that's growing in popularity among right-wing extremists: that immigration is a ploy to eliminate the Caucasian race from the planet.
Titled 'The Inconvenient Truth', it paid homage to Christchurch shooter Brenton Tarrant, who had termed immigration as "an assault on the European people" and written, "This is ethnic replacement. This is cultural replacement. This is racial replacement. This is WHITE GENOCIDE."
Crusius similarly said his attack was "a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas," and that he was "simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion."
He argued that white women were not having enough children and expressed concern that this immigrant influx would replace aging white voters and turn Texas blue, which in turn would give the White House to the Democrats.
He denied being a white supremacist but went on to state that "race-mixing" was destroying the country and demanded the establishment of territorial enclaves determined by race.
It explains why he singled out El Paso, which has a predominantly Hispanic population. El Paso County is more than 80 percent Latino, and tens of thousands of Mexicans legally cross the border each day to work and shop in the city.
It has also been at the center of a raging debate about Trump's controversial border wall, for which a Twitter account linked to Crusius had expressed its support."#BuildTheWall is the best way @POTUS has worked to secure our country so far!" a tweet read.
While Crusius' attack seems to be driven by a twisted notion that the Caucasian race was being systematically eliminated, authorities are still scrambling to determine the motivation for Betts' killing spree.
At least five of the nine killed in Dayton were people of color, but there is nothing to suggest that they were targeted on purpose or that it was motivated by hatred toward minorities.
His former classmates at the Bellbrook High School have said he was "dark and depressive" and a "toxic masculine a***hole". They also said that he maintained a "hit list" of classmates that he wanted to hurt and kill, as well as a "rape list" of girls he wanted to sexually assault. He was expelled but later allowed to enroll again.
He cannot be a white supremacist if his social media profiles are to be believed. He described himself as a "he/him /anime fan/metalhead/leftist" and said he would happily vote for Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren. The Greene County Board of Elections listed his party as "Dem".
He had expressed disappointment over the 2016 presidential elections, writing, "#2016ElectionIn3Words This is bad," and added, "I want socialism, and I’ll not wait for the idiots to finally come round to understanding."
He had also posted, "F*** John McCain" on the day after his death and retweeted a message which read, "Millennials have a message for the Joe Biden generation: hurry up and die."
In the aftermath of the Marjory Stoneman high school shooting, he tweeted at Senator Rob Portman, "@robportman hey rob. How much did they pay you to look the other way? 17 kids are dead. If not now, when?"
He had criticized the country's gun policy, writing, "This is America: Guns on every corner, guns in every house, no freedom but that to kill."
While Betts was killed in the shootout with the police, Crusius is currently in police custody and is staring at a potential death penalty. The FBI and the US Attorney's Office for the Western District of Texas said that the El Paso shootings were being handled as a case of domestic terrorism and that Crusius could face hate crime and firearms charges on top of the capital murder counts.