El Paso Matters

2 days ago | elpasomatters.org | Robert Moore

Early voting is here! Your vote helps shape the future of local schools—from budgets to classroom quality. 📚✏️ Use our voter guide to learn about candidates for EPISD, SISD, and EPCC school boards. 👉 Read the voter guide The man who slaughtered 23 people in a hate-inspired mass shooting in 2019 left an El Paso courtroom for the final time Tuesday, destined to serve his life imprisoned far away from the city he terrorized but did not vanquish.

2 days ago | elpasomatters.org | Robert Moore

Early voting is here! Your vote helps shape the future of local schools—from budgets to classroom quality. 📚✏️ Use our voter guide to learn about candidates for EPISD, SISD, and EPCC school boards. 👉 Read the voter guide Yolanda Tinajero sat across the courtroom from the man who murdered her brother, Arturo Benavides, and 22 other people, hoping to help the mass killer understand more about her brother, her community, her culture.

3 days ago | elpasomatters.org | Robert Moore

The grinding path to justice for the most lethal mass shooter to ever appear in a U.S. courtroom came to an end Monday when Patrick Crusius pleaded guilty to murdering 23 people and wounding 22 others in an anti-Hispanic assault on an El Paso Walmart in 2019. He was sentenced by 409th District Judge Sam Medrano to life in prison without the possibility of parole for capital murder, and life in prison for each of 22 counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

1 week ago | elpasomatters.org | Priscilla Totiyapungprasert

Board candidate Phillip Shawn Ollis called the Socorro Independent School District’s financial crisis the “elephant in the room” looming over the May 3 election. Whoever is elected to the SISD board will inherit a debt that mounted over a decade before the current board – staring down the barrel of impending financial exigency, the equivalent of bankruptcy for education institutions – voted to lay off nearly 300 employees to shave $38 million from next year’s budget deficit.

1 week ago | elpasomatters.org | Robert Moore

The North Texas man who has acknowledged that he killed 23 people and wounded 22 others in an anti-Hispanic attack at an El Paso Walmart in 2019 will plead guilty Monday, more than five years after the mass shooting. Patrick Crusius, now 26, of Allen, Texas, is the most lethal mass shooter to ever face justice in a U.S. courtroom. The nation has experienced five deadlier mass shootings than the Walmart shooting on Aug. 3, 2019, but those gunmen either took their own lives or were killed by police.