Jamrowski spent the night desperately awaiting word of whether her brother-in- law, Andre Anchondo, had survived the attack that also wounded more than two dozen. "They said that if he were alive, more than likely he would have gotten in contact by now," Jamrowski said. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video Authorities are investigating the possibility the shooting, which also left more than two dozen injured, was a hate crime, working to confirm whether a racist, anti-immigrant screed posted online shortly beforehand was written by the man arrested in the attack on the 680,000-resident border city. Just hours after the El Paso shooting, reports emerged of another, in Dayton, Ohio.

Police reported that nine people had been killed, as well as the gunman, and 16 people had been injured. El Paso Police chief Greg Allen said the earlier suspect had been arrested without police firing any shots outside the Walmart near the Cielo Vista Mall, about 8 kilometres from the main border checkpoint with Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. People gather in Juarez, Mexico, in a vigil for the three Mexican nationals who were killed in an El Paso shopping complex shooting. Credit:AP Two law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity identified the suspect as 21-year-old Patrick Crusius, who lives in Dallas, more than 1000 kilometres away from El Paso. "The scene was a horrific one," said Allen, adding that many of the 26 people who were hurt had life-threatening injuries.

The shootings came less than a week after a 19-year-old gunman killed three people and injured 13 others at the popular Gilroy Garlic Festival in California before dying of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Loading Residents quickly volunteered to give blood to the injured after the El Paso shooting, and police and military members were helping people look for missing loved ones. Details of how the shooting unfolded were not immediately clear. But video footage from the scene showed victims lying on the ground inside and outside the store. One shopper told Reuters the gunshots sounded like they began outside the building. Adriana Quezada, 39, said she was in the women's clothing section of Walmart with her two children when she heard gunfire.

"But I thought they were hits, like roof construction," she said of the shots. Her 19-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son threw themselves to the ground, then ran out of the store through an emergency exit. They were not hurt, Quezada said. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video She said she saw four men, dressed in black, moving together firing guns indiscriminately. Police later said they believed the suspect, who was armed with a rifle, was the only shooter. Ryan Mielke, a spokesman for University Medical Centre of El Paso, said 13 of the injured were brought to the hospital with injuries, including one who died. Two of the injured were children.

Eleven other victims were being treated at Del Sol Medical Centre, hospital spokesman Victor Guerrero said. Those victims' ages ranged from 35 to 82, he said. Relatives said a 25-year-old woman who was shot while holding her 2-month-old son was among those killed, while Mexican officials said three Mexican nationals were among the dead and six more were wounded. President Donald Trump tweeted: "God be with you all!" Standing alongside US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper in Sydney, Foreign Minister Marise Payne offered her condolences.

"Our thoughts and prayers to those who are dealing with their injuries," she told reporters. Pompeo acknowledged Australia's condolences. Former deputy prime minister Tim Fischer, who was instrumental in the Howard government's sweeping gun reforms in 1996, said Americans must stand up to the gun lobby after the latest atrocity. "Until the state and federal congresses stand up to the NRA no real progress will be made," Mr Fischer said. "In the meantime Australia's DFAT should upgrade the smart traveller site to reflect the dangerous situation in the USA re guns."

He said Pompeo should also be asked why the US doesn't at the very least adopt background checks for gun purchases and limitations on assault weapons. At a candidate forum Saturday in Las Vegas, presidential candidate and former Texas congressman Beto O'Rourke, who is from El Paso, appeared shaken after news of the shooting was reported. The Democrat said he heard early reports that the shooter might have had a military-style weapon, saying we need to "keep that [expletive] on the battlefield. Do not bring it into our communities." El Paso Mayor Dee Margo said police were investigating whether a document posted online shortly before the shooting was written by Crusius. In it, the writer expresses concern that an influx of Hispanics into the United States will replace aging white voters, potentially turning Texas blue in upcoming elections and swinging the White House to the Democrats. The writer also is critical of Republicans for what he described as close ties to corporations and degradation of the environment. Though a Twitter account that appears to belong to Crusius included pro-Trump posts praising the plan to build more border wall, the writer of the online document says his views on race predated Trump's campaign and that any attempt to blame the president for his actions was "fake news".

Though the writer denied he was a white supremacist, the document says "race mixing" is destroying the nation and recommends dividing the United States into territorial enclaves determined by race. The first sentence of the four-page document expresses support for the man accused of killing 51 people at two New Zealand mosques in March after posting his own screed with a conspiracy theory about non-white migrants replacing whites. Margo said he knew the shooter was not from his town. "It's not what we're about," he said at the news conference with Gov. Greg Abbott and the police chief. El Paso is nearly a 10-hour drive from Allen. In the hours after the shooting, authorities blocked streets near a home in Allen associated with the suspect. Officers appeared to speak briefly with a woman who answered the door of the gray stone house and later entered the residence. El Paso County is more than 80 per cent Latino, according to the latest census data, and the city, where the mayor said tens of thousands of Mexicans legally cross the border each day to work and shop, has become a focal point of the immigration debate. Trump visited in February to argue that walling off the southern border would make the US safer, while city residents and O'Rourke led thousands on a protest march past the barrier of barbed wire-topped fencing and towering metal slats.

O'Rourke stressed that border walls haven't made his hometown safer. The city's murder rate was less than half the national average in 2005, the year before the start of its border fence. Before the wall project started, El Paso had been rated one of the three safest major US cities going back to 1997. Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project, said the El Paso shooting suspect wasn't on her group's radar before the shooting. "We had nothing in our files on him," Beirich wrote in an email. The shooting is the 21st mass killing in the United States in 2019, and the fifth public mass shooting. Before Saturday, 96 people had died in mass killings in 2019 - 26 of them in public mass shootings. The AP/USATODAY/Northeastern University mass murder database tracks all US homicides since 2006 involving four or more people killed, not including the offender, over a short period of time regardless of weapon, location, victim- offender relationship or motive. The database shows that the median age of a public mass shooter is 28, significantly lower than the median age of a person who commits a mass shooting of their family.

Since 2006, 11 mass shootings - not including Saturday's - have been committed by men who are 21 or younger. CNN reported that the FBI has opened a domestic terror investigation into the Texas shooting. Democratic presidential candidates expressed outrage on Saturday that mass shootings have become chillingly common nationwide and blamed the National Rifle Association and its congressional allies after a gunman opened fire at a shopping area near the Texas-Mexico border. "It's not just today, it has happened several times this week. It's happened here in Las Vegas where some lunatic killed 50 some odd people," Bernie Sanders said as he and 18 other White House hopefuls were in Nevada to address the nation's largest public employees union. "All over the world, people are looking at the United States and wondering what is going on? What is the mental health situation in America, where time after time, after time, after time, we're seeing indescribable horror." Sanders blasted Republican Senate leadership for being "more concerned about pleasing the NRA than listening to the vast majority of the American people" and said that President Donald Trump has a responsibility to support commonsense gun safety legislation.

Shortly after the shooting and before its death toll was widely reported, White House officials said Trump had been briefed while spending the weekend at his New Jersey golf club. He conveyed his initial reaction on Twitter, writing that the shooting was "terrible" and that he was in close consultation with state officials. He turned to other topics, tweeting a note of encouragement to UFC fighter Colby Covington, a Trump supporter, and retweeting two messages that furthered his argument that African Americans had flourished under his administration. Later Saturday night, Trump tweeted condolences. "Today's shooting in El Paso, Texas was not only tragic, it was an act of cowardice. I know that I stand with everyone in this Country to condemn today's hateful act. There are no reasons or excuses that will ever justify killing innocent people. Melania and I send our heartfelt thoughts and prayers to the great people of Texas." Former vice president Joe Biden told reporters, "Enough is enough." "This is a sickness," Biden said. "This is beyond anything that we should be tolerating." He added: "We can beat the NRA. We can beat the gun manufacturers." A visibly frustrated Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar said: "I believe that the NRA have long dominated American politics to the point where they have stopped sensible legislation that would have prevented deaths and prevented killings. They have done it time and time again."

Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, noted: "We are the only country in the world with more guns than people." "It has not made us safer," he said. "We can respect the Second Amendment and not allow it to be a death sentence for thousands of Americans." California Sen. Kamala Harris promised to use an executive action within her first 100 days of taking office to impose gun control. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker said, "This has got to be a movement, politics or not, we've got to make ending this nightmare a movement before it happens to yet another community or another person dies." Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren tweeted: "Far too many communities have suffered through tragedies like this already. We must act now to end our country's gun violence epidemic. AP, Reuters