Ten people were shot to death after a murderous gunman opened fire in Dayton, Ohio, early Sunday morning, just hours after 20 people were slaughtered by another homicidal shooter in El Paso, Texas, bringing the horrific death toll for the mass shootings to 30 people in less than 24 hours in America.
According to the New York Times and multiple other media outlets, a gunman armed with a rifle and extra magazine clips stormed a popular entertainment district in Dayton at about 1 a.m. Sunday, Aug. 4, shooting nine dead and injuring another 26 before the gunman was killed by local officers.
Earlier in the day in Texas, a shooter named Patrick Crusius, 21, allegedly slaughtered 20 people at random and shot another 26 at a Walmart in El Paso, according to USA Today. Police are reportedly going to charge Crusius with a hate crime as he allegedly wrote a hate-filled manifesto railing against Mexican immigrants.
In Ohio, Mayor Nan Whaley said the officers’ quick response of less than a minute to the Oregon District greatly limited the number of casualties in the city of Dayton, which is about halfway between Columbus and Cincinnati in southwest Ohio, The New York Times stated.
Because of the large cache of magazine clips on the Dayton mass shooter’s person, the city’s mayor said that if the police had not responded in so timely a fashion, “hundreds of people in the Oregon District could be dead today.”
At least 26 other people were injured in the frightful fusillade of bullets in Dayton and are being treated at local hospitals. There is is no word as of yet as to the state of their injuries.
CNN and other outlets said the dead gunman in Dayton has not yet been identified, but that he was armed with a .223-caliber rifle and had additional high-capacity magazines with him. Whaley said there was only one shooter, but they have not yet ascertained any motive for the second incident of deadly mass shootings in one day in the U.S.
