The mother of a young man suspected of gunning down 22 people at a Walmart in the US state of Texas called police weeks before, concerned about a military-style weapon he owned, the family’s lawyers has told CNN.
The report comes with bipartisan sentiment for action on gun safety appearing to grow after the killings in El Paso and another mass shooting hours later in Dayton, Ohio that left nine people dead.
This image provided by the FBI shows Patrick Crusius, the suspected gunman who opened fire in an El Paso, Texas, shopping area packed with people during the busy back-to-school season Saturday, August 3, 2019. (FBI via AP)
CNN reports that the mother of the El Paso suspect, Patrick Crusius, called police in the Dallas suburb of Allen weeks before the attack because she was concerned about his owning an “AK”-type firearm, the network quotes family lawyers as saying.
AK usually refers to a Kalashnikov, a type of semi-automatic rifle.
The lawyers, Chris Ayres and R. Jack Ayres, of Dallas, tell CNN that Crusius’s mother was worried given her son’s age, maturity level and lack of experience with such a weapon.
They add that, during the call, a police officer told her that — based on what she described — her 21-year-old son was legally able to purchase the weapon.
But the mother’s call was “informational” and not motivated out of a concern that her son posed a threat, the lawyers say, adding the mother did not give police her name or her son’s name.
“This was not a volatile, explosive, erratic behaving kid,” CNN quotes Chris Ayres as saying. “It’s not like alarm bells were going off.”
— AFP
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