[NEWS] Teen victim of Texas mass shooting straddled bi-national culture – Loganspace AI

HORIZON, Texas (Reuters) – Just a few hundred college students, teachers and kin filled a excessive faculty athletic stadium in Texas on Monday to honor a youngster of U.S.-Mexican citizenship who modified into once the youngest of twenty-two killed in a taking pictures rampage police suspect modified into once driven by racism.

Javier Rodriguez, 15, modified into once one week into his sophomore year at Horizon Excessive College, where he played on the soccer crew, when he modified into once decrease down by gunfire at a Walmart store on Saturday within the west Texas border metropolis of El Paso.

“Javier modified into once correct a younger man fats of lifestyles, working in this identical stadium we’re in now,” Juan Martinez, superintendent of the Clint Self reliant College District birth air El Paso, suggested the crowd. “He didn’t must die in a tragedy fancy this.”

The hour-prolonged memorial service within the El Paso suburb of Horizon opened around twilight with the faculty principal welcoming Javier’s folks and sister onto a stage, where they released a white dove into the obvious evening sky.

A community of teachers simultaneously released 21 more doves, one for every and each of the a form of victims, ranging in age from 23 to 90, most of them with Hispanic surnames.

A 21-year-used white man who police said drove more than 600 miles (956 km) from suburban Dallas to El Paso to fabricate the taking pictures spree and surrendered to police on the scene has been charged with capital abolish.

Authorities appreciate said they’re investigating the rampage as a abominate crime, citing a racist, anti-immigrant manifesto posted online quickly sooner than the taking pictures, which they attributed to the suspect, Patrick Crusius.

In it, the creator known as the Walmart assault “a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas”.

Martinez said, “Apparently, Javier modified into once a target as a result of color of his pores and skin. Javier did now now not take the color of his pores and skin, nor did I, nor did you.”

Because the superintendent spoke, a member of the excessive faculty band, overcome by emotion, modified into once escorted away sobbing.

Not only modified into once Javier the youngest killed on Saturday, he perhaps as powerful as anyone represented the blended heritage and culture of El Paso, which alongside with Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, correct across the Rio Grande and the neighboring Fresh Mexico metropolis of Las Cruces, kinds the greatest bi-nationwide, bilingual metropolitan attach in North The USA.

Friends said Javier held dual U.S. and Mexican citizenship. Police identified seven others killed within the assault as Mexican nationals, and one as German. The rest had been U.S. residents, police said.

Inclined Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke, an El Paso native in quest of the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, also spoke, pointing out that Javier’s uncle modified into once among the many wounded, describing the nephew’s lifestyles as “an expression of the hope now we appreciate in each and each other.”

O’Rourke added, “Please realize that this violence, this hatred will now now not justify this community, nor will it justify the Rodriguez family.”

The 21 others killed on Saturday had been identified by police as: Andre Pablo Anchondo, 23; Jordon Anchondo, 24; Arturo Benavidez, 60; Leonard Cipeda Campos, 41, Maria Flores, 77; Raul Flores, 77; Jorge Calvillo Garcia, 61; Adolfo Cerros Hernandez, 68; Alexander Gerhard Hoffman, 66; David Alvah Johnson, 63; Luis Alfonzo Juarez, 90; Maria Eugenia Legarrega Rothe, 58; Elsa Libera Marquez, 57; Marie True, 56; Ivan Hilierto Manzano, 46; Gloria Irma Marquez, 61; Margie Reckard, 63; Sarah Esther Regaldo Moriel, 66; Teresa Sanchez, 82; Angelina Sliva-Elisbee, 86; and Juan Velazquez, 77.