Relatives and friends cried and held each other as they paid their last respects Monday during a funeral for Raul and Maria Flores, a couple that was mercilessly gunned down along with 20 others on 3 August at a Walmart in eastside El Paso. Raul Flores, 83, and Maria Flores, 77, had been married for 60 years and had moved back from California to El Paso to retire.

“They were the most loving, humble and giving people you could ever meet,” said Raul Flores Jr, one of the couple’s three children. “They had so much love in them and for each other that God probably decided to take them together.”

Flores said his entire family felt and appreciated the support shown by the community. “It is amazing how much love and support El Paso has to offer,” he said.

The city continues to mourn the lives lost in what community leaders described as a senseless tragedy, and the funeral for the Floreses is only the latest for the many victims, who ranged in age from 15 to 90 and who included eight Mexican nationals and a German national.

The suspect in the shooting turned himself in to police shortly after the attack with an AK-47-style rifle, which also injured 25 people.

Family members and friends of the Floreses said the couple had met across the border in Juárez, Mexico.

“Raul was a tailor at a local shop where he first laid eyes on Maria. He would make sure he was outside sweeping when Maria would walk down the sidewalk,” according to the family’s written tribute. “He tried getting her attention by asking her: ‘Te cepillo el pelo? [Shall I brush your hair?]’ as he motioned with the broom.” Eventually he “swept her off her feet”, the family said.

The Rev Fabian Marquez, who officiated the funeral mass for the Floreses at St Stephen Catholic church, met the family at an improvised reunification center set up the day of the attack for relatives and others who sought to know the fate of the shooting victims.

‘It is amazing how much love and support El Paso has to offer,’ said Raul Flores Jr. Photograph: Diana Washington Valdez/The Guardian

“Telling them that their parents died was the most difficult thing I ever had to do as a priest in my 15 years,” Marquez said. “The attack by a stranger who came to the city and took out the lives of loving people affected not only this family, but the entire city.”

Sandra McNeil and Irene Valenzuela, friends of the Floreses, said the couple was devoted to their children, grandchildren and extended family members. They were often organizing or involved in birthday parties or other celebrations.

“They were the sweetest, nicest, loving and welcoming people you could ever know,” McNeil said. “Their ear-to-ear smiles were genuine. They were the kind of people who would hug you when they greeted you.”

Incense wafted throughout the church as Marquez and family members walked around the two coffins gently swinging an incense-filled censer and praying.

During the service, Marquez said he and Flores family members had gone to the improvised memorial behind Walmart, where thousands of residents still stop to leave flowers, pictures, encouraging words, prayers, plush toys and other items. To show El Paso’s binational culture, one visitor planted US and Mexican flags sewn together.

After the service, mariachis played traditional Mexican songs like Amor Eterno (Eternal Love) as relatives led the twin caskets on rollers to a pair of hearses for cremation.

According to a police arrest affidavit, the killer told police he was the shooter and that his targets “were Mexicans”. About 20 minutes before his shooting spree, the killer posted a screed on the anonymous messaging board 8Chan filled with anti-immigrant rhetoric and claimed that he wanted to stop the country’s “Hispanic invasion”.

Police said the killer apparently drove 650 miles from Allen, Texas, to carry out the attack.

The former US congressman Beto O’Rourke and current congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee attended the funeral. O’Rourke, who is from El Paso, is seeking the Democratic party’s nomination for the 2020 presidential race.

Raul and Maria Flores are survived by their three children, Raul Flores Jr, Leticia Saldana, and Adriana Flores, 11 grandchildren and 12 great grandchildren.

Diana Washington Valdez is an author-journalist and political analyst in El Paso, Texas