El Paso shooting memorial draws many honoring the dead and wounded

Dan and Daisy Ramirez took their three children to the memorial for the 22 people killed 10 days earlier at an El Paso Walmart. The family quietly walked along the block-long memorial outside Walmart made up of candles, crosses, balloons, signs, stuffed animals and wooden crosses. 

Daisy Ramirez, who works at an El Paso Walmart at a different location, said she both dreaded visiting the informal memorial outside the Walmart, and felt compelled to come. 

“I just had to. I needed to come over here,” she said, standing at the edge of the memorial at the Cielo Vista Mall August 13. “I put myself in that cashier’s position, like what I would have done. I don’t know. I just needed to get it over with, and kind of relieve myself.”

One of the Walmart cashiers was hit by a bullet, but survived. Twenty-two people were shot and killed August 3 by a 21-year-old man, a white supremacist determined to kill Hispanics in a hate crime. More than 24 people were injured.

Hundreds of people continue to stop by the memorial, which looked like so many other cities’ mass shooting memorials. This one included signs of support from places of other shootings such as Dayton, Ohio, where nine people were killed and several people injured the day after the El Paso murders; from Gilroy, California, where three people were killed and 13 injured at a garlic festival in July; and Tucson, Arizona, where in 2011 six people were killed and 13 injured including United States Congresswoman Gabrielle “Gabby” Giffords.

The El Paso couple said they have many friends and family — from both El Paso and Juarez — who regularly shop at the Ciela Vista Mall Walmart, referred to by locals as “The Mexican Walmart” because it is so close to the border and regularly draws many Mexican shoppers. The Saturday morning of the shooting, the store offered free or discounted back-to-school supplies including backpacks, so the place was filled with children, parents and grandparents. 

The Ramirezes believed it was important to bring their children, 4, 7 and 10, to the memorial.

“It’s sad. We brought our kids so they could see that anything can happen,” Daisy Ramirez said. “They can learn from it and be aware of it.”

Her husband agreed.

“We don’t want to put it in our child’s mind, but we also have to be, you know, this is reality. I mean, life offers a lot of beautiful things,” Dan Ramirez said, “but there’s also things that we have to be aware of. And you just never know when anything can happen. You gotta be strong.”

Like so many people whose communities have experienced mass or other kinds of shootings, Dan Ramirez said he found the incident difficult to comprehend.

“We never thought it would happen. This community has been a very united place, very calm place, safe place,” said Dan Ramirez, born and raised in El Paso. “And, you know, for something like this, it’s just crazy and unbelievable for us.”

They said that, as Hispanics, the shooting makes them wary.

“With us, we’re more like on the lookout because we have the kids,” said Daisy Ramirez, who was born in El Paso but spent much of her childhood in Juarez. “So we’re constantly, like, looking back and forward.”

She added she and other Walmart employees are on edge.

“That next day, I had to go to work at 7:30 in the morning. And I was just really nervous [getting] from home to work,” she said. “Every person that goes in, we’re just looking after each other, you know. We’re on the lookout for anything, anything that might be suspicious.”

The couple posed for a picture, deciding it was safer not to have their children photographed alongside them.

Dan Ramirez picked up their 4-year-old son, and the family moved back toward the memorial. They joined dozens of others who were walking silently, some with tears rolling down their cheeks, many leaning on each other, past the keepsakes of memorializing.

“It’s gonna be hard to get over all this,” Daisy Ramirez said.​