Candles had been lit before the altar, one for every person who had died in the massacre. But they also symbolized the uncertainty that gripped this binational and majority Catholic border community as it awaits final confirmation on who died.
As the city moved fitfully through its first day after the shooting, many residents said they condemned the hateful and racist message spewed by the gunman in a manifesto that railed against immigration and a “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” They mourned, too, a punctured sense of safety the city has long cherished. And there was talk of resilience, of somehow emerging stronger.
But a void stood in their way: On Monday, more than 48 hours after the mass shooting, El Paso authorities still had not released the names of those who were killed. That stood in sharp contrast to the situation in Dayton, Ohio, where nine people were killed in a mass shooting about 13 hours after the massacre in El Paso. By midday Sunday, authorities there had identified all of the dead, a group of men and women that spanned two generations.
Mexican officials disclosed Sunday the identities of its citizens, seven in all. And relatives of some of the others have confirmed their deaths in interviews with the news media or through social media posts.
On Monday, the El Paso Police Department said the death toll in the attack had risen to 22, after two of the dozens wounded died in the hospital.
Since the massacre, the Walmart has mostly remained sealed off, the parking lot still crammed with the cars belonging to those who had been shopping when the gunman, identified as Patrick Crusius, 21, stormed the store. The bodies of the victims remained inside the store until Sunday, officials said.
The delay in releasing the names came as authorities sought to confirm victims’ identities and inform their families. Medical examiners worked through the weekend, finishing Sunday afternoon, authorities said.
“We are working on notification of next of kin,” said Sgt. Robert Gomez, a spokesman for the El Paso Police Department. “We’re going to release the names of the deceased once we have completed that task. It’s an ongoing process, it’s lengthy at times, and I don’t have an estimate for when we’re going to do it, but we will probably release those names as a whole.”
Still, details have trickled out.
Arturo Benavides, a bus driver and a U.S. Army veteran, was in line at a register when he was struck and killed, his relatives said. His wife, who survived, had been sitting on a bench near the bathroom.
A couple, Jordan and Andre Anchondo, were shopping with their 2-month-old baby, relatives said. The baby survived with two broken fingers, likely caused after his mother shielded him with her body.
And Angelina Englisbee, 86, had been talking on the phone with one of her sons when she said she had to hang up because she was in the checkout line, said her granddaughter, Mia Peake, 16. That was the last Englisbee’s family heard from her.
In the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas, another border community, officials in the Pharr-San Juan-Alamo Independent School District identified a 1996 graduate of its high school, Leonardo Campos Jr., as another victim.
“Leo was a great athlete during his time at Bears, the goalie for the soccer team and the kicker for the football team,” the school board president, Jesus Zambrano, said in a statement. “He was well liked and a role model to athletes like me that looked up to him. We pray for him, his wife and his entire family.”
And in a Facebook post, school officials in Clint, Texas, a small town southeast of El Paso, said that one of their students, Javier Amir Rodriguez, was also among the dead.
The foreign minister of Mexico, Marcelo Ebrard, identified Sunday seven people from his country who were killed: Ivan Filiberto Manzano, Elsa Mendoza de la Mora, Gloria Irma Márquez, María Eugenia Legarreta Rothe, Jorge Calvillo García, Adolfo Cerros Hernández and Sarita Regalado.
The El Diario newspaper in Ciudad Juárez, where Mendoza lived, reported that her husband and son were waiting for her in their car outside the Walmart when the shooting broke out.
In a Facebook post, Mendoza’s husband, Antonio, wrote an emotional farewell to his wife. “I say goodbye to my partner, the most wonderful of women, a being full of life who will continue to light our path for the time that life gives us... we will miss you love!!!!”
In another Facebook post, Sandra Ivonne Cerros, the daughter of Cerros and Regalado, confirmed her parents’ deaths. “We are devastated,” she wrote. “These have been very difficult hours. Now we are united and experiencing our mourning.”
And in the city of Torreón, the hometown of Calvillo some 500 miles south of El Paso, the mayor there, Jorge Zermeño Infante, wrote on Twitter, “May God grant solace to his family and friends, as well as to all those affected by this event.”
Lacking clarity and desperate for answers soon after the shooting, some families began gathering at a school roughly 1 mile from the Walmart.
Emotional support dogs played with children while adults sat anxiously, waiting to talk to authorities, said Alejandra Dozal, a mental health counselor who was volunteering at the school, which had been designated as the reunification center by officials in the hours after the shooting.
“Most of the families had called or visited area hospitals to find loved ones but could not get confirmation,” she said. “It seems that the process is going slow because they are getting solid confirmations one family at a time.”
Eventually, Dozal said, law enforcement officers guided a few families into another room. In an instant, she said, their uncertainty was over.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.