EL PASO: 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 in 2019.
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 center 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.
In 2022, more than 600 mass shootings occurred in the US in which at least four people were killed or wounded, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
1 killed, 3 hurt in shooting at Texas shopping mall
1 killed, 3 hurt in shooting at Texas shopping mall
- El Paso police said that two people had been taken into custody
- The shooting happened in a busy shopping area
Nigeria police charge driver in fatal Joshua crash
- Adeniyi Mobolaji Kayode charged with reckless and dangerous driving causing death
- British boxer's two friends Latif Ayodele and Sina Ghami were killed in the crash
LAGOS: Nigerian police on Friday charged the driver of a car carrying British boxer Anthony Joshua that was involved in a fatal crash with “reckless” and “dangerous driving causing death.”
Adeniyi Mobolaji Kayode, 46, was also charged with driving without a valid “driver’s license” and “driving without due care and attention, causing bodily harm and damage to property,” Oluseyi Babaseyi, a spokesman for the police in Ogun state, told AFP.
He was granted a five million naira bail ($3,500) but will remain in detention until he meets bail conditions, Babaseyi said.
Kayode was driving the boxer and two of his friends, Latif Ayodele and Sina Ghami, on a busy highway linking Lagos and Ibadan in southwest Nigeria when the Lexus SUV in which they were traveling rammed into a stationary truck on Monday.
Nigerian police and state officials said that Ayodele and Ghami died at the scene, while Joshua and the driver sustained minor injuries.
The Traffic Compliance and Enforcement Agency (TRACE) in Ogun state, where the accident occurred, told AFP earlier in the week that its preliminary investigations showed that the vehicle was moving at an excessive speed and had burst a tire before the crash.
Kayode is due to appear in court on January 20.
