El Paso Walmart shooter ordered to pay $5 million to families of victims

• Texas Walmart shooter ordered to pay millions.
• Patrick Crusius pleads guilty.
• He doesn’t appear to have any assets.

Patrick Crusius, a white man from Texas who went on a shooting spree at a Texas Walmart in 2019, has reached a plea deal.

He killed 23 people in cold blood after saying that he believed Hispanics were going to take over the government and the economy.

Now, Crusius has agreed to pay over $5 million to the families of the victims of his racist attack.

This was announced through an order signed by a judge on Monday, September 25, according to reports.

Walmart shooter’s million-dollar settlement

Crusius was sentenced in July to 90 consecutive life sentences after pleading guilty to federal hate crime charges.

This was one of the worst mass shootings in recorded United States history, The Associated Press noted.

According to court records, his attorneys, along with the Department of Justice, agreed on the amount of restitution.

This was later approved by federal district judge David Guaderrama and is meant to go to the families of the victims.

Historic Walmart mass shooting

Patrick Crusius, now 25 years old, reportedly does not have significant assets, according to The Associated Press.

The shooter was 21 years old at the time of the attack and had dropped out of community college.

He drove over 700 miles from his residence near Dallas to carry out the attack using an AK-style rifle.

Crusius entered a Walmart in El Paso, Texas and primarily targeted Hispanics during the shooting.

Patrick Crusius’s racist motivation

Shortly before the attack, Crusius uploaded a racist rant online, warning of a supposed Hispanic «invasion» of Texas.

He pleaded guilty in February, in a deal that let him avoid the federal death penalty, however Texas prosecutors still aim to put him on death row in their state.

They plan to pursue the death penalty in his state trial, which still doesn’t have a date yet.

According to the agreement between Crusius and the federal government, he has committed to paying $5,557,005.55 to the families of the victims.

There are doubts about the shooter’s ability to pay

Dean Reckard, whose mother Margie Reckard was killed in the shooting, chose not to be part of the restitution agreement.

He expressed doubt that someone serving a life sentence would have the ability to pay millions of dollars.

Reckard stressed that one cannot assign a value to a person’s life and that the victims will never get their loved ones back.

Neither Joe Spencer, Crusius’ attorney, nor a spokesperson from the Justice Department, have responded to requests for a comment.

Proposed changes to how federal prisoner’s accounts are managed

In January, the Justice Department proposed changes to the management of federal prisoner escrow accounts to ensure payment to victims.

This came up after was revealed that several inmates were keeping large sums of money in their prison accounts.

The 2019 attack at the Texas Walmart was the deadliest in a series of hate crime-related massacres in the US since 2006.

This was determined by information from a joint database compiles by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University.

The Texas Walmart shooter’s racist ideology

Before the attack, Crusius was deeply involved in the country’s immigration debate and expressed his support for stronger border protections.

Crusius tweeted things like «build the wall» as he supported former president Donald Trump’s harsh immigration policies.

His statements leading up to the massacre warned of a Hispanic takeover of the government and economy.

In summary, families of the Walmart shooting victims have been awarded compensation by the courts, according to the AP.