Twenty nine people were killed in the US in two separate mass shootings which occurred less than 24 hours apart during the weekend. The first shooting, which took place at 10:39am on Saturday at a Walmart shop in El Paso, Texas, claimed the lives of 20 people and left 26 injured. As the country was still reeling from the atrocious incident, nine people were reported killed and at least 27 injured in another shooting at a bar in Dayton, Ohio around 1:07am on Sunday.
El Paso shooting
It is reported that on the morning of August 3, 2019, a 21-year-old suspect armed with a WASR-10 rifle walked into a packed Walmart supermarket in El Paso and opened fire at customers, killing 20 people and injuring 26. Among the killed and injured victims were respectively 6 and 7 Mexican citizens. The suspect was arrested a few minutes after the shooting and taken to custody. He will be facing capital murder charges. The shooting, which is being investigated as a hate crime and domestic terrorism due to online postings by the perpetrator, is the deadliest this year so far and the 8th deadliest in US history, dating from 1949 to date.
Dayton shooting
On Sunday morning, about 14 hours after the El Paso shooting, a 24-year-old man carrying a .223 caliber semi-automatic rifle allegedly massacred nine people and injured at least 27 others at the entrance of Ned Peppers Bar in Dayton. According to reports, the shooting took less than a minute due to a swift response by law enforcement officers. It is said that the gunman was shot dead by first responders within 30 seconds after he began shooting. Among the victims he killed was his 22-year old sister. At the time of this writing, the motive of the shooting was still unknown.
According to the list of mass shootings in the US in 2019, in total, 44 people lost their lives in 11 separate shootings last week (from Monday, July 29 to Sunday, August 04). A number of factors, including the ease of access to guns, are believed to contribute to the high rate of mass shootings in the US.
