The victims of 2 weekend mass shootings include 1 gunman's sister, new parents, 5 Mexican citizens

Police in Dayton, Ohio, have identified the nine people killed early Sunday outside a popular bar, Ned Peppers, and profiles are emerging of the 20 confirmed casualties from the mass shooting 13 hours earlier at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.

Police shot and killed the Dayton gunman, identified as 24-year-old Connor Betts, and one of his first victims was his 22-year-old sister, Megan Betts. Also killed in Dayton were Lois Oglesby, 27; Nicholas Cumer, 25; Thomas "Teejay" McNichols, 25; Beatrice Warren-Curtis, 36; Saeed Saleh, 38; Derrick Fudge, 57; Logan Turner, 30; and Monica Brickhouse, 39. Six of the victims were black, but "we have no evidence to suggest that there's a bias motive to this crime," said Dayton Police Chief Richard Biehl. But police, he added, are still trying to answer "the question that everyone wants to know: Why?”

YouTube

Watch On

Federal prosecutors say they are investigating the El Paso shooting as "domestic terrorism" and possible hate crime, given evidence of the suspected shooter's racial animus against Latinos. Five of those killed in the El Paso shooting were identified as Mexican citizens — Sara Esther Regalado, Adolfo Cerros Hernández, Jorge Calvillo García, Elsa Mendoza de la Mora, and Gloria Irma Márquez — and among his other victims were Jordan and Andre Anchondo. Jordan Achondo, 24, appears to have died shielding their 2-month-old son, Paul, said a cousin, Monique Terry. They had two other children. The infant, who survived, was grazed by a bullet and suffered two broken fingers, probably from when his mother's body fell on him, she added. Dayton victim Oglesby had also recently given birth, relatives said.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Nicholas Cumer, slain in the Dayton shooting, was a graduate student earning his master of cancer care at Saint Francis University in Loretto, Pennsylvania, and had been interning at a cancer care facility in Dayton. Arturo Benavides, a 60-year-old Army vet, was killed in El Paso while shopping with his wife, The New York Times reports.