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The suspect, Patrick W. Crusius, 21, who is white, also divulged to police he had targeted “Mexicans,” according to the document, written by Detective Adrian Garcia of the El Paso Police Department.
While responding to reports of an active shooter Saturday morning, the document said, rangers with the Texas Department of Public Safety saw a vehicle stop at an intersection near the Walmart. It said a man exited the vehicle and admitted opening fire on customers and employees in the store.
After waiving his Miranda rights, Crusius said he had used an AK-47-style rifle and brought multiple magazines with him from Allen, Texas, to carry out the killings, Garcia wrote. Crusius’ mother had called the Allen Police Department in the weeks before the shooting, asking whether her son was mature enough to handle the rifle he had recently ordered.
Authorities have said the gunman wrote a four-page manifesto that said he was carrying out the attack in “response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”
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The suspect is facing a state capital murder charge and is being held without bond. The El Paso prosecutor has vowed to seek the death penalty, and federal prosecutors are considering charging the suspect under hate crime statutes, as well as firearm laws that can carry a death sentence.
The El Paso police chief, Greg Allen, previously said Crusius “basically didn’t hold anything back” in interviews with investigators and had told them he drove for 10 to 11 hours from Allen to El Paso. He became lost in the border city and drove to the Walmart because he was hungry, Allen said.
The El Paso killings were one of three shootings in a week that are now being investigated by federal authorities. A gunman in Dayton, Ohio, killed his sibling and eight other people near a bar, rattling the nation less than 12 hours after the El Paso killings.
An FBI agent said the Dayton gunman, who was killed by police, had been exploring “violent ideologies.” Agents also opened a domestic terrorism investigation into a shooting in Gilroy, California.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.