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Inside the decision to allow 2 victims to hug the gunman who killed their loved ones [1]
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Date: 2025-04-23
When Yolanda Tinajero told the man that killed her brother Arturo Benavides that she felt a desire to hug him but knew it wasn’t allowed, District Judge Sam Medrano felt a personal connection.
“The first thing that moved me about her was her true faith in trying to forgive. And I’ll be honest with you, she reminded me of my mom. My mom would do the same thing,” Medrano said in an interview with El Paso Matters on Wednesday, a day after two women who lost loved ones to gunman Patrick Crusius in the 2019 Walmart mass shooting chose to forgive and hug him.
So Medrano, who has presided over the 409th District Court for 29 years, asked Tinajero: “Ma’am, would it truly bring you peace and comfort if you were to hug him?” She said yes, and Medrano granted permission for the hug.
Adriana Zandri of Ciudad Juárez, whose husband, Ivan Filiberto Manzano, was among the 23 people killed by Crusius on Aug. 3, 2019, had given her victim impact statement Monday. But she remained in El Paso to listen to the statements of other victims’ families, and was moved by Tinajero’s hug.
She asked to do the same, and Medrano and defense attorneys agreed. So she returned to the courtroom Tuesday afternoon and gave her hug of forgiveness, moments before the proceedings in the 5½-year-old criminal case ended.
Patrick Crusius listens to the last victim statements after his sentencing at the Enrique Moreno County Courthouse on April 22, 2025. (Omar Ornelas/El Paso Times)
The powerful gestures of forgiveness by two women – one Mexican-American, the other Mexican – to a white man who slaughtered innocents to stop “the Hispanic invasion of Texas” has drawn worldwide attention.
“If you read one thing today, I hope it’s this. Forgiving the unforgivable,” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox wrote on the social media platform X, sharing the El Paso Matters story on the hugs.
Robert Enright, a professor of developmental psychology at the University of Wisconsin who founded the scientific study of forgiveness, called Tinajero and Zandri “heroic.”
“They saw him as a child of God. And if you think about that, that is a hugely heroic move, because what they’re really doing is they’re seeing him as more than a murderer. In doing that, they were seeing his humanity,” Enright said in a phone interview with El Paso Matters.
He said El Paso, which suffered widespread trauma in the attack, has an opportunity to be an example to the world on healing from tragedy.
“I think El Paso has an unbelievably great opportunity to form a forgiving community, which can be instructive to others,” he said. “Some will look in and criticize, some will look in and run away and turn away. But there are others who will say, ‘I hadn’t thought of this before.’ They could draw knowledge and strength from those who have already walked this path of forgiving and are standing with each other.”
This is the story about how two remarkable examples of human compassion came to happen, based on interviews with the judge and attorneys in the case.
Caught by surprise
Crusius, now 26, pleaded guilty Monday to capital murder and 22 counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and was sentenced to 23 life terms in state prison. In 2023, he pleaded guilty to federal hate crimes and weapons charges, and was sentenced to 90 life terms in federal prison.
“Patrick will spend the rest of his natural life in prison; he’ll never again walk free. Patrick will leave prison only in a coffin, on God’s time,” defense attorney Joe Spencer told the court after his guilty plea Monday.
After the plea and sentencing, 35 people gave what are known as victim impact statements Monday and Tuesday, telling the defendant and the court how their lives were forever changed by horrific violence. Most of those giving statements lost loved ones in the shooting; some were wounded and survived their injuries.
Each statement was unique, but several common themes emerged. People wanted to make sure their loved ones were never forgotten. Many expressed pride in the Hispanic culture that was the target of Crusius’ attack. Some condemned white supremacist beliefs that animated the gunman’s actions. Many expressed forgiveness, usually citing their faith.
By the time Tinajero and her daughter Melissa approached the witness box in the late morning Tuesday, 23 people had given their impact statements.
Yolanda Tinajero, center, whose brother Arturo Benavides was killed in the 2019 El Paso Walmart shooting, walks out of the courtroom on Monday, April 21, 2025, accompanied by family after the sentencing of gunman Patrick Crusius. (Gaby Velasquez/El Paso Times)
Looking at Crusius, she talked lovingly about the 60-year-old brother whose life was taken by the gunman while he shopped at Walmart. She spoke of his love for his wife, Paty, and for all their nieces and nephews.
“As for me, I feel an empty space in my heart for him, but in this empty space, I still have room for forgiveness for you,” she said. “At first, I was very angry at you, but God helped me to surpass this anger with forgiveness.
“I feel in my heart to hug you very tight so you could feel my forgiveness, especially my loss. But I know it’s not allowed. I want you to see and feel all of us who have been impacted by your actions that has brought us all closer with God’s love, which shows you that this great city of El Paso is a very forgiving place to dwell in.”
Medrano focused on Tinajero’s feeling that her wish to hug the mass killer wasn’t allowed. He had never permitted something like that in all his years on the bench.
“One of the beauties of victim impact statements is they’re there to have victims and families let the court, let the system, and more importantly, the person who hurt them, know how they feel. So when she said, ‘but I know that’s not allowed,’ that’s what caught me.”
He quickly decided he would let Tinajero hug the defendant if she would find it healing.
“I have no idea why I thought that this would work out exactly the way it would. I really don’t. I kind of thought, OK, this is so unexpected that the defendant doesn’t have time to think about it and come up with an excuse or a plan for it to go wrong,” Medrano said.
The judge’s permission for the hug stunned the defendant, defense team and prosecutor.
“It caught our whole team by surprise. I know it caught Patrick by surprise. I don’t mind telling you, I wasn’t sure how he’s going to react because he has a difficulty with anybody touching him. He’s got this phobia for human contact,” Spencer said in an interview with El Paso Matters.
Crusius struggled to process what was happening, Spencer said.
“He was a little confused because he didn’t quite understand why she wanted to do that,” the attorney said.
District Attorney James Montoya said his office didn’t vet the victim impact statements, and he was caught off guard with what unfolded.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a situation where a family member of a victim wanted to embrace the person that killed their loved one. I mean, shock I don’t think quite captures the moment for me. Just very, very surreal,” Montoya told El Paso Matters.
A hug, and a whisper
Surrounded by security, Tinajero crossed the courtroom to what is normally the jury box, where Medrano had placed the defendant and his attorneys for the impact statement. They were seated in the second row, and they made their way to the front row, where a thin wooden barrier was all that stood between the gunman and a woman whose life he had upended.
Crusius, his hands shackled in front of him, leaned forward and accepted Tinajero’s hug while avoiding eye contact. His face showed no emotion, as has been the case throughout years of court proceedings. She whispered in his ear and Crusius briefly nodded.
Spencer heard Tinajero’s words, but declined to share them, saying it would be inappropriate.
“I can just tell you that it was surrounded by compassion and love and forgiveness that her graciousness is …. It still chokes me up thinking about it. It’s part of what the El Paso community has shown.”
District Judge Sam Medrano presided over the state trial of mass shooter Patrick Crusius. (Ruben R. Ramirez/ElPaso Matters)
Tinajero’s daughter Melissa, who also gave an impact statement, said her mother chose to keep her message private.
“My mom has asked me to say that she won’t speak on that. That was for her healing and closure,” Melissa Tinajero said.
The moment was not captured on camera. Medrano has generally allowed cameras in the courtroom during the mass shooting case, but didn’t permit them during impact statements to protect the privacy of victims.
The court took a lunch break shortly after the hug, and Medrano and his bailiffs walked to a nearby restaurant. Yolanda Tinajero was there.
“As I walked in, I just touched her shoulder and kept going. But she was still there when we were leaving and she said, ‘I want to thank you because it really did bring healing and peace to me to be able to do that,’” the judge said.
A second request
During the lunch break, Zandri reached out to victim advocates at the District Attorney’s Office, asking to be allowed to hug the defendant. Montoya said he was shocked by the request.
“I had a conversation with Ms. Zandri the day before on Monday, and she expressed gratitude to me, personally, and she was very kind and very sweet. (She spoke) of how much of this process or bringing it to an end would allow her and her children some degree of being able to continue living their lives, to not have to keep coming back to court or continue getting updates,” Montoya said.
Medrano said he was wary about whether defense attorneys would allow a second victim’s family member to hug their client.
Crusius was again confused by Zandri’s request for a hug, Spencer said.
“Why would they want to do that with what I did?” Spencer said his client asked.
He said he responded: “Because I think they want to express their sincere forgiveness to you. And then he said, ‘Oh.’”
Adriana Zandri, center, asked District Judge Sam Medrano for permission to hug convicted mass shooter Patrick Crusius at the conclusion of his criminal proceedings on Tuesday, April 22. (Ruben R. Ramirez/El Paso Inc)
The defense agreed to Zandri’s request, and she was allowed back into the courtroom.
Manzano had come from Juárez to El Paso on a Saturday to shop, something thousands of Mexicans do every day. But Crusius saw him as an invader and gunned him down.
“I’d like to ask permission, on behalf of myself and my children, to hug Mr. Patrick,” Zandri asked Medrano in Spanish.
“Ma’am, would that help you and your family seek comfort, peace and healing?” Medrano asked.
“Yes, sir,” she said, and walked across the courtroom to hug Crusius.
The last act of the prosecution of the deadliest mass shooter to ever face justice in a U.S. courtroom would be him being hugged by the widow of a man he killed. By this time, Medrano had allowed two still photographers to come into the courtroom to photograph Crusius as he was escorted out of an El Paso courtroom for the final time. They also captured the second hug.
The two hugs brought an outpouring of emotion among the 60 or so people in the courtroom, including participants, security, media and families of those killed. Many wept, including the judge.
But one person was largely unaffected.
Patrick Crusius.
“He has trouble, in my opinion, from the five-and-a-half years I’ve been dealing with him, of showing emotion and understanding love and understanding emotion. He just doesn’t process it like the rest of us,” Spencer said.
A path to further healing
Enright, the Wisconsin professor who has spent almost 50 years studying the effects of forgiveness, said the anger and pain that are experienced by victims of violence have profound effects on people.
Robert Enright
“And these effects can be discouragement, anger, hatred, that can turn into anxiety, and mistrust, and even psychological depression. And it’s not so much the injustice itself, but that which we carry with us as the effects on the rest of our lives,” he said.
“And, so, what happened in 2019 could have literally lived at the heart of these two women, Yolanda and Adriana, for the rest of their lives. And, so, what they’ve done is they’ve opened their hearts to this man. And forgiveness isn’t what we do internally for ourselves with a focus on ourselves. It’s a focus outward on goodness toward the one who brutalized us or our loved ones.”
“And now this gentleman, Patrick, has no more power over them,” Enright said.
He said the actions of Tinajero and Zandri could inspire others on their own healing paths. But he cautioned that people heal in different ways and at different paces.
“We have to be gentle with that and not pressure those who are not ready to forgive to go ahead and forgive. They need time. And at the same time, while we have to be careful not to condemn those who won’t forgive, we have to be careful not to condemn and criticize those who will,” Enright said.
The judge and attorneys in the Walmart mass shooting case all said they believe El Paso can continue the community’s healing now that the criminal prosecutions are done. But they acknowledge it’s not easy.
“I don’t think that there is one right way, and I don’t think that there’s one right answer,” District Attorney Montoya said. “I know many members of the community and some of the families, as I mentioned in the press conference, wanted the death penalty. I don’t think that they are wrong to feel that way. I think it is a totally justifiable feeling. As I’ve mentioned, it’s how I feel, personally.”
El Paso District Attorney James Montoya gets ready to coclude the victim statements as part of the final day of court for the Walmar mass shooter at the Enrique Moreno County Courthouse on April 22, 2025. (Omar Ornelas/El Paso Times)
Spencer, the defense attorney, said the forgiveness on display in court is a reflection of the spirit of El Paso.
“Within days after the August 3rd shooting, we had two different victim family members reach out to Patrick’s family, telling them that they forgave him and they were praying for him and didn’t wish him to have the death penalty,” he said. “That, to me, set a bar of what I thought the majority of this community is all about. Certainly, there’s a lot of anger for what Patrick did, rightfully so, by this community. But the way they came together with this tragedy was so impressive. But this is what makes El Paso unique.”
Judge Medrano said he hopes the examples of Tinajero and Zandri can inspire a healing process for others in El Paso.
“I’m hoping that these heroes are the example that we follow to heal. There’s never going to be closure, never,” Medrano said.
But, he believes that focusing on the lives of those lost, and not their deaths, should “start filling the minds of this community so that these will be good days to remember the people who have been part of our lives that now take care of us from a better place.”
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[1] Url:
https://elpasomatters.org/2025/04/23/how-victims-of-aug-3-walmart-mass-shooting-got-to-hug-killer/
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