Mass Shootings In El Paso & Dayton - 13 Hours Of Bloodshed

A Hail Of Bullets Once Again Hit Flesh, Killing At Least 31 People And Shattering Two Communities More Than 1,500 Miles Apart. When Will It End?

Retired U.S. Army sergeant Arturo Benavides, 60, and his wife, Patricia, 63, usually shopped for groceries on Sundays after church but changed their routine to hit a Walmart in El Paso on Saturday instead. Inside, the store bustled with back-to-school shoppers, many, as always, from Ciudad Juárez, a few miles away across the border in Mexico. As Arturo stood in line at the register, Patricia rested nearby on a bench by the restroom. It would be the distance between life and death. Seconds later, just after 10:30 a.m., a gunman with a rifle opened fire inside the store. Someone pushed Patricia into a bathroom stall— “She doesn’t know who saved her,” says Arturo’s great-niece Jacklin Luna—but in the chaos Arturo was lost. Before police arrived and the shooter surrendered, Arturo was one of 22 people fatally shot, with another 27 wounded, and a “normal day for someone to leisurely go shopping turned into one of the most deadly days in the history of Texas,” said Governor Greg Abbott.

Just 13 hours later, another nightmare: The popular Oregon District entertainment zone in Dayton bustled with Saturday-night crowds. Holly Redman, 31, and her friend James Williams, 50, had just left the Ned Peppers bar around 1 a.m. Sunday when, out on East 5th Street, “all of a sudden you heard ‘pop pop pop pop pop,’ ” says Redman. “A guy said, ‘Everybody back—it’s a shooting!’ ” Officers arrived on the scene in less than a minute, killing the gunman as he tried to enter the bar, but not before he fatally shot nine ​people, including his 22-year-old sister, and injured at least 27 others. “There were so many on the ground,” says Redman. “Some were dead already. It was awful.”