Hundreds attend El Paso memorial for shooting victim with few family

Hundreds of mourners attended the memorial Friday of a woman they had never met, a victim of the El Paso shooting earlier this month, after her husband opened the service to the public.

When 63-year-old Margie Reckard died in the Walmart shooting that killed 22 people in the Texas border city on August 3, her husband Antonio Basco thought he would have to bury her alone, according to local media.

_{GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP / Sandy Huffaker/}^{An outpouring of some 10,000 messages and more than 900 floral arrangements came flooding in}

And on Friday afternoon some 700 people — in a line that stretched down the street — waited in almost 100-degree Fahrenheit (38-degree Celsius) heat, according to US media, to pay their respects.

The overwhelming response meant Reckard’s service had to be relocated to a larger facility, La Paz Faith Memorial and Spiritual Center, Perches Funeral Homes said.

^{Antonio Basco has been leaving flowers every day at a victims’ memorial outside the Walmart where the shooting took place}

While some of the attendees had traveled from other towns or even states for the service, many were community members shaken by the act of mass violence that thrust their city into the national spotlight.

Although Basco and Reckard had no children, her offspring from a previous marriage had come to the ceremony, according to US media.

El Paso lies on the Rio Grande River which marks the US border with Mexico. It has a population of 680,000, of which 83 percent are of Hispanic descent.

The shooting came hours before a gunman in Dayton, Ohio, killed nine people, reigniting calls for gun control in the US.