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Opinion: Providing graphic video, photos from Aug. 3, 2019, Walmart attack would make what happened clear to the public [1]
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Date: 2025-08-08
There is now footage online that reveals the cruelty of Aug. 3, 2019. El Paso Matters has chosen not to describe or release the graphic content that was featured in the files shared with them by the YouTube channel Interrogation Files. (The channel obtained the footage through a record request made through the Texas Department of Public Safety, which assisted in the investigation).
Alejandro Samaniego
I stand against this decision.
The fallout of a mass shooting begins almost the instant the shooter begins firing their weapon. We have seen this happen multiple times. When kids were hunted down in their classrooms during the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, they documented their assault on Snapchat. I remember listening to the explosive power of the shooter’s weapon on TV as its bullets demolished desks, splintered books and tore apart skin. The footage was shown on repeat by multiple news channels.
A year later, Aug. 3, 2019, videos were circulated that day on social media by witnesses and victims, and some of the images were graphic.
A lot of us have seen the video of Alden Hall walking through the aisles as gunshots are heard in the vicinity. We have seen the video of shoppers sheltering underneath a table as the attack unfolded. Our collective memory of that day can be traced through the flurry of social media posts that offered a different glance at the attack.
I remember seeing the live feed on TV as victims were being hauled to ambulances on shopping carts.
In 2022, the city of Uvalde, Texas, had its reality shattered when a lone gunman shot and killed multiple children and teachers at Robb Elementary School.
About a month later, the Austin American-Statesman gained access to the CCTV footage from the day of the shooting and made it available to the public. It showed the shooter entering and beginning his rampage. It also revealed the hesitation and inaction of local law enforcement as they stood outside the classroom for 77 minutes before breaching the classroom and ending the attack. This footage is easily accessible.
In late 2023, The Washington Post released a series of stories that highlight the role and controversy of the AR-15 weapon platform in the USA. One story, headlined “Terror on repeat,” included never-before-seen images taken at Robb Elementary. The pictures were taken inside the classrooms where the shooting occurred. They were graphic and uncensored. While no bodies were shown, the physical damage that was inflicted upon the kids was made apparent by the viscera that dominated the images. This was an act of destruction and terror.
I write this near the sixth anniversary of the 2019 El Paso shooting. I am writing this with the knowledge that the perpetrator of this attack will spend the rest of his life in prison. Yet, I am still appalled.
In the wake of the shooting, the city banded behind a united motto, El Paso Strong. It was meant to encapsulate the determination of a city to move beyond the terror and form bonds through kinship and love. The logo was plastered on T-shirts, painted on storefronts, and in some cases, tattooed on skin. The city was able to illuminate its resilience and display to the world that no act of violence will deter us from living.
However, I believe that there is a fracture in the borderland that has moved our city into a tense standstill that awaits ignition.
El Paso is a beautiful city. There is no denying that the city is, for the most part, calm. Living in the borderland can offer a hazy and limited perspective on outside elements. Many of us who are native to El Paso can attest that the city has a certain magic that anchors us to its desert.
But behind the magic, some of us fail to see that many of us accept and normalize the same conditions and factors that led to our collective attack.
How can a city be united when I have heard members of respectable institutions rally against immigrants? How can a city be accepting when social media comments pertaining to local matters are filled with racist slurs and anti-immigrant rhetoric?
I overheard a conversation amongst my coworkers that shared an affinity toward the ICE raids and hoped that some would take place in the city soon. I remember one of them said, “They come in and take all of our jobs, it’s good for them to leave”.
El Paso exists in a state of impunidad that is reflected in our discourse, family and community. It is a state that allows us to engage in dangerous rhetoric and the false belief that we are immune to its effects.
In “Unspeakable Violence: Remapping U.S. and Mexican National Imaginaries” the scholar Nicole M. Guidotti-Hernández writes: “… Mexicans, Mexican Americans, Anglos, and indigenous peoples are all implicated in hierarchical systems in which racism, gender, sexual oppression are differentiating mechanisms that often create their own kinds of violence, be they physical, psychic, or discursive, often operating as acknowledged or unacknowledged institutionalized racism.”
That is to say, the conditions that gave rise and momentum to our attack continue to work against our efforts to combat hateful ideologies.
When we refuse to acknowledge our faults, when we refuse to cede a mentality that lacks empathy, when we refuse to accept responsibility, we will face a reckoning.
It is paramount that all information be made available to the public concerning one of the deadliest terrorist attacks against a Hispanic community. This includes footage of the attack and its fallout. To deny the public this information would be a disservice to the truth of the day and to the city that suffered.
This refusal to share footage is reminiscent of the immediate fallout from the Robb Elementary School shooting. They did not want us to see.
Guidotti-Hernández notes, “marginalized people of color have been literally silenced through their deaths and mistreatment, which represent utter acts of state failure.”
Our community continues to fall into the vicious cycle of division and will continue to do as such. Making the footage public would make a truth visible. The truth being that Aug. 3 should have been the start of community unification. Instead, the very rhetoric that gave rise to this attack can be heard in college campuses, local parks, diners, church and others.
By choosing to withhold footage, we are forced to accept the silence and continue to live under the false belief that it cannot happen here again.
Alejandro Samaniego was born and raised in El Paso and is a writing tutor.
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[1] Url:
https://elpasomatters.org/2025/08/08/opinion-why-el-pasoans-need-to-see-graphic-images-of-aug-3-2019-walmart-attack/
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