Currents News Staff
The suspected El Paso shooter, 21-year old Patrick Crusius, is being held in isolated lockdown inside the city’s downtown detention center.
According to a Sheriff’s Department official, he is being held in a single, 7-by-11-foot cell, away from other inmates.
“In just moving him from his area to another area, just to make sure that he’s not attacked, there’s all sorts of things, when he’s transferred,” explained former El Paso Police Chief Carlos Leon.
“They’ve got to ensure that that person makes it to trial. As I understand he’s being held in an area safe from other inmates and safe from himself,” he said.
Reports say that the suspect is not on suicide watch.
Police Lieutenant Dustin Liston is leading the team which tracked down what they believe to be the shooter’s racist manifesto. He has said that police had to first sift through a lot of false information and panic to find that clue.
“We were able to uncover this manifesto relatively quickly, but we weren’t able to attribute it to the suspect until later,” said Liston.
Investigators are still piecing together information on the shooter’s alleged planning, including his long car journey to El Paso.
“Did he talk to anybody? Did he indicate anything at all? Do you have tape on that?,” are all key questions Leon believes authorities are looking at leading up to the shooting.
“You never know who it is that’s going to see the signs and people that see the signs might assume, ‘Well, I don’t know this person very well. Someone else is going to report it,’ that’s not a great idea. If there’s a problem, anyone who sees it should get involved and report it,” said Daniel Lieberman, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at George Washington University.
Leon is confident this resilient community will recover, but said residents will have serious security concerns going forward.
“There will be a fear factor in all of us, as we go to these larger stores, large events. Of course we’re going to be thinking in the back of our minds, ‘Hey, am I safe here,’ and you start looking around.”