Staff
The El Paso Journal
Tuesday, May 02, 2023 | 20:32
Cleveland, Texas— Authorities near Houston caught a man suspected of killing five of his neighbors, including a 9-year-old boy, with an AR-style rifle after the family confronted him late at night about firing rounds in their yard.
Francisco Oropeza, 38, was taken into custody Tuesday, four days after the Friday night shooting in the city of Cleveland, about 45 miles (72 kilometers) north of Houston, according to Montgomery County Sheriff Rand. Henderson.
Montgomery County District Attorney Brett Ligon said Oropeza is being held in the Montgomery County Jail.
Police found Oropeza hiding in a closet at his sister’s home in the Montgomery County city of Cut and Shoot, San Jacinto County District Attorney Todd Dillon said. The suspect’s wife was in the home at the time of his arrest.
Authorities are investigating whether Oropeza’s relatives had been hiding him in the days after the deadly shooting, Dillon said.
He is charged with murder, but additional, more serious charges are pending grand jury approval, the district attorney continued.
four days runaway
The arrest comes four days after police said Oropeza entered a home on a quiet, pockmarked street in rural Texas on Friday night and massacred five people: three mothers, a teenager and a 9 year old boy
“Of course I am happy, but not very happy because this is not going to bring my wife back,” said Jeffri Rivera, whose girlfriend of 21 years, Diana Velásquez Alvarado, was among those killed. The mother of two young children died protecting a group of children from gunfire, her boyfriend said.
Police say Oropeza broke into his neighbor’s house on Friday and began shooting members of the four families who had gathered that night. Ramiro Guzmán, who survived the massacre by hiding under a blanket in a closet with his wife and 6-month-old son, said beforehand that his brother-in-law had asked Oropeza to stop firing his AR-15 so close to his patio. front because the noise disturbed the 6-week-old baby of his sister and brother-in-law.
The five people killed were Alvarado, Sonia Argentina Guzmán Taibot, 25 years old; Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31; and Daniel Enrique Lazo Guzman, 9.
“Being on the run for four days, I highly doubt he’s in the area,” said Gregory Fremin, a retired Houston Police Department captain and professor at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville. As the search expands beyond the immediate neighborhood, Fremin said, investigators will look to locate Oropeza’s relatives and anyone who may be in regular contact with him. (Some official records list his last name as Oropesa.)
Question response time
In the days after the massacre, family members demanded answers about what they say was a slow police response time. Jeffri Rivera, who survived the riot, said he called 911 multiple times before the shooting began and told dispatchers the neighbor was acting threatening. When the gunman fired into the house, Rivera said he called 911 several more times.
“I told them to hurry up because I was killing everyone,” Rivera said. His girlfriend, Velázquez Alvarado, was among the dead. Police found her body protecting the children, including two of her own, who survived unharmed.
San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers has not responded to repeated requests for comment on response times, nor has the office produced any 911 call logs or dispatch records.
Experts said the isolated nature of the neighborhood, the pockmarked condition of the road, the lack of available officers and overlapping jurisdictional boundaries could have impacted law enforcement response time. On Tuesday morning, two work trucks from Montgomery County Precinct 4 filled the potholes on the rutted road.
searched everywhere
On Tuesday, three large banners with Oropeza’s face and information about the reward in English and Spanish hung at the entrance to the neighborhood, at an intersection next to the house and another intersection up the street where the murder occurred, Walter Drive ( the FBI put up digital billboards throughout the Houston area and said they would be statewide soon). Balloons and stuffed animals from a vigil the night before lined the front lawn of the cream-colored house; a vase of fresh flowers perched on the porch. Two young women left a yellow bouquet.
Neighbors standing in front of the house said they had pleaded for law enforcement to pay attention to the needs of their community.
