El Paso shooter’s mother warned police about her son weeks before massacre

The Dallas-based mother of the El Paso mass shooter who killed 22 people, claims she called the police weeks prior to the shooting to share her concerns about his ownership of an assault rifle.

The woman allegedly called the Allen Police Department claiming she was worried her son wasn’t mature or experienced enough to own an “AK”-type firearm. 

The suspect’s lawyers, Chris Ayres and R. Jack Ayres, allege that the call was expressing “informational” concern rather than worries that he might pose an actual threat to anyone. 

“This was not a volatile, explosive, erratic-behaving kid,” Chris Ayres said. “It’s not like alarm bells were going off.”

Patrick Crusius, from the Dallas suburb of Allen, drove 650 miles (1,046km) to the border city of El Paso where he opened fire at patrons of a Walmart. The majority of the 22 people killed were Hispanic, including eight Mexican citizens. Authorities are investigating the massacre as both a hate crime and an act of domestic terrorism. 

A public safety officer with whom Crusius’ mother spoke told her that, based on the description she gave of her son, he was legally allowed to buy the weapon in question. 

Prusius’ alleged manifesto which appeared online, believed by authorities to be authentic, declared his attack to be a “response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

Allen police listed three minor interactions with the suspect throughout his life prior to the shooting, including a false burglar alarm, a minor accident on a school bus, and the suspect running away from home briefly in 2014. 

Governor Greg Abbott said Wednesday that he was unaware of any so-called “red flags” in Prusius’ past, and made no mention of introducing any gun control measures in the state. Abbott stated that racism and violent extremism must be confronted head-on and that he would be seeking the death penalty for the El Paso shooter.

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