EL PASO, Texas — One person was killed and three more were wounded Wednesday in a shooting at a shopping mall’s food court 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 men 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.
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 targeting Hispanic people in 2019. El Paso — with a largely Latino population of about 700,000 people — sits on the US border with Mexico, where residents of both countries cross frequently.
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 all of the victims were males.
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. (AP)