Lawyer: Family never heard suspect express racist views

As funerals were held Thursday in Mexico for some of the country's citizens who died in the El Paso shooting, a lawyer for the suspected gunman's family said they never heard him express racist views.

Authorities believe Patrick Crusius, 21, wrote a racist, rambling screed that railed against mass immigration before opening fire last weekend at a Walmart. Crusius lived near Dallas, and El Paso police say he drove more than 10 hours to the largely Latino border city in Texas to carry out the shooting that killed 22 people and wounded about two dozen others. He's been charged with capital murder.

Chris Ayres, a Dallas-based attorney for Crusius' family, told The Associated Press in an email they never heard Crusius express the kind of racist and anti-immigrant views that he allegedly posted online.

"These views were never expressed to the family. Ever," Ayres wrote. The lawyer did not address questions about how the weapon used in the attack was obtained. But he said Crusius "occasionally shot guns, as many do, with his dad."
O'Rourke, who was raised in El Paso and represented the city in Congress for six years, said after walking across the international bridge into Ciudad Jurez, Mexico, that he was there "to remind the world that we are a binational community."
"I have a lot of pride in this community right now," he said. "We need to share that message right now because there's a lot of hatred, a lot of racism, a lot of violence being directed, a lot of terror being directed toward these communities right now."
"Let's see what we can do to stop this racism because it's not fair," Leopoldo Mendoza said. "This is purely a consequence of the president of the United States being racist toward Mexicans." ___