West Texas shooting

On August 31, 2019, a mass shooting occurred across the cities of Midland and Odessa in Texas, United States. 36-year-old Seth Aaron Ator drove around the cities, firing from his car. He killed 7 people and injured 25 others before being shot and killed himself by police at a movie theater in Odessa.

Shooting
At 3:17 P.M. on Interstate 20, 36-year-old Seth Aaron Ator shot and killed a Texas state trooper during a traffic stop. Ator then drove to nearby Odessa where he killed a second person before abandoning his Honda; he killed a mail carrier and stole U.S. postal service truck. He drove around the city, killing four people before police finally surrounded Ator in a Cinergy movie theater parking lot, which is where they killed him.

Victims
In total, there were seven killed, one in Midland city and the rest in Odessa:


 * Leilah Hernandez, 15
 * Edwin Peregrino, 25
 * Mary Granados, 29
 * Kameron Kartless Brown, 30
 * Raul Garcia, 35
 * Joe Griffith, 40
 * Rodolfo Julio Arco, 57

Midland Police officer Zachary Owens was injured as well as Odessa Police officer James Santana; Texas Department of Public Safety employee Chuck Pryor was injured. Hernandez's 18-year-old brother Nathan was shot as well. The rest of the injured were an unidentified 1-year-old girl, a 9-year-old boy, 38-year-old Marc Gonzalez, 55-year-old Timothy Beard, 62-year-old Glenda Dempsy, 62-year-old Marco Corral, 53-year-old Coy Edge, 60-year-old Joseph Glide, 28-year-old Daniel Munoz, 38-year-old Robert Cavasoz, 27-year-old Maria Boado, 45-year-old Efe Obayagbona, 64-year-old Bradley Grimsley, 54-year-old Timmothy Hardaway, 41-year-old Quadri Fatai, 21-year-old Jesus Alvidrez, 46-year-old Lilia Diaz, 36-year-old Krystal Lee, 34-year-old Larry Shores.

Perpetrator
Seth Aaron Ator, 36, was an avid hunter go frequently shot and killed animals from his roof. He had been arrested in 2001 for breaking into a woman's bedroom and eventually had been flagged by the National Criminal Background Check system as mentally unfit to buy firearms. He required the gun he used in the spree shooting through an off the books sale by a 45-year-old man from nearby Lubbock.

Reactions
President Donald Trump, Governor Greg Abbott as well as other Texas politicians all released statements of condolences on the shooting, with Democratic politicians urging for stricter gun control laws despite the fact that Ator was already barred from purchasing guns and had to go through a private sale.