CLEVELAND, Texas, USA. (AP) — A Texas man went next door with a rifle and killed five of his neighbors, including an 8-year-old boy, after they told him to stop shooting in their yard because they were trying to sleep, authorities said.
The suspect, identified as 38-year-old Francisco Oropeza, was still on the run 18 hours after the massacre and authorities warned that he may still be armed. The attack happened just before midnight Friday in Cleveland, a town about 45 miles (72 kilometers) north of Houston, on a street where, some residents say, it’s not unusual to hear neighbors firing guns. of fire.
San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers said Oropeza used an AR-style rifle and as his search continued Saturday afternoon, authorities expanded the search area by up to “10 to 20 miles.” . Oropeza may still be armed, he added, but he believes authorities have the rifle he used in the shooting.
Capers said they found clothing and a phone while combing a rural area with dense layers of forest, but the sniffer dogs lost track of the scent.
“Now I could be anywhere,” he said.
Capers noted that the victims ranged in age from 8 to 31 and that they are all believed to be Hondurans. They were all shot “from the neck up,” she said.
The attack was the latest act of gun violence in a record pace of mass shootings in the United States so far this year, some of which have been carried out with semi-automatic rifles.
The mass homicides have been in a variety of locations: A school in Nashville, a bank in Kentucky, a dance hall in Southern California and now in a rural Texas neighborhood inside a one-story house.
Capers said there were 10 people in the house, some of whom had just arrived the week before, and that no one else was hurt. Two of the victims were found in a bedroom, lying on top of two children in an apparent attempt to protect them.
FBI spokeswoman Christina Garza said investigators don’t believe everyone inside the home was part of the same family. The victims were identified as Sonia Argentina Guzmán, 25 years old; Diana Velázquez Alvarado, 21 years old; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31 years old; José Jonathan Casarez, 18 years old; and Daniel Enrique Laso, 8 years old.
Before the shooting, family members had walked to the fence separating the two homes to ask the suspect to stop firing rounds, Capers added. He replied that he was on his property, and a person in the house filmed him approaching the door with the rifle, he added.
The incident occurred on a rutted rural street where one-story houses on sprawling lots of about half a hectare (one acre) are surrounded by many trees. A horse could be seen behind the victims’ house, while a dog and chickens roamed in the front garden of Oropeza’s house.
Rene Arevalo Sr., who lives a few houses down, said he heard shots around midnight but didn’t care.
“It’s something normal that people here do, especially on Fridays after work,” Arevalo said. “They come home and start drinking in their backyard and shoot out there.”
Capers said his agents had been to Oropeza’s home at least once before and talked to him about “firing his gun in the yard.” It was not clear if any action was taken at the time. At a news conference Saturday night, the police chief said that firing a firearm on his own property may be illegal, but he did not indicate whether Oropeza had previously broken the law. _____ Weber reported from Austin, Texas. Associated Press writer Ken Miller contributed to this report.
