Several injured, killed in mass shooting in El Paso, Texas

The Saturday afternoon shooting came amid conflicting reports by local law enforcement authorities and media outlets regarding the number of victims and the suspects caught by police.
 
This is while El Paso Police Sgt. Enrique Castillo declared in a press briefing that authorities do not believe there is an ongoing threat, after the city’s Mayor Dee Margo stated in a televised interview that three suspected gunmen were in police custody.
 
Castillo had earlier announced that only one person was captured by police after officers responded to an active shooter in the area of the Cielo Vista Mall in El Paso amid reports that multiple victims were injured at Walmart department store.
 
Police authorities also stated earlier that they had received reports of multiple shooters and were "conducting (a) search of a very large area."
 
Federal undercover agents from the FBI office in El Paso were also responding to the incident, according to local news reports, which further added that a second mall about 2.5 miles away from the shooting site – about three miles south of El Paso International Airport -- was also placed on lockdown.
 
El Paso, which has a population of nearly 680,000 residents, is located in West Texas and sits across the border from Mexican city of Juarez.
 
US President Donald Trump has also been briefed on the shooting, and the White House is monitoring the situation, according to a statement issued by Deputy Press Secretary Steven Groves.
 
Meanwhile, Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke, who once represented El Paso in Congress, described the Saturday shooting as "truly heartbreaking” in a Twitter message, adding: "Stay safe, El Paso."
 
Presidential candidate and former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke appeared a bit shaken as he appeared at a candidate forum in Las Vegas on Saturday shortly after news of the shooting in his hometown was reported.
 
O’Rourke further said he had heard early reports that the shooter might have had a military-style weapon, insisting that we need to “keep that (expletive) on the battlefield and do not bring it into our communities.”
 
“We have to find some reason for optimism and hope or else we consign ourselves to a future where nearly 40,000 people are year will lose their lives to gun violence and I cannot accept that,” he also emphasized.
 
Texas Governor Greg Abbott also tweeted that the state Department of Public Safety is assisting local law enforcement in the aftermath of the mass shooting incident.
 
The El Paso carnage came in the same week two employees were fatally shot at another Walmart store in Southaven, Mississippi, and three people were shot and killed at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California.