Washington, May 1 (EFE).- The White House once again urged Congress on Monday to approve laws that restrict the use of firearms in order to prevent shootings like the one that occurred this weekend in the town of Cleveland (Texas). ), in which five Honduran citizens were killed, including a nine-year-old boy.
“It is not too late to save lives and prevent a new shooting from happening,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said at a press conference.
According to the spokeswoman, US President Joe Biden believes that Congress must act “without delay” to prevent tragedies like the one this weekend from happening again.
“Congress must act. What makes these tragedies even more heartbreaking is that it is entirely in our power to prevent them, because it is up to us to get these weapons off our streets,” the spokeswoman said.
Biden has repeatedly called on Republicans, who control the US House, to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, which allow a gun wielder to kill large numbers of people without having to stop to reload bullets.
The United States passed a federal ban on assault weapons in the country in 1994, but it expired in 2004 without being renewed by Congress.
The shooter, who has gone on the run, committed the killings with an AR-15 rifle, used in many of the shootings in recent years in the United States.
The suspect has been identified as Francisco Oropesa, 38, a national of Mexico who had been deported four times from the US before illegally re-entering the country the last time, a source from the Security Service told EFE. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
On Friday night, Oropesa was shooting in the garden of his house with an AR-15 rifle when one of his neighbors approached him and asked him to stop making noise because it was very late and the family, including some children, were not there. I could fall asleep.
Oropesa responded by breaking into his neighbors’ homes to shoot them in the neck and head, as if it were an “execution,” as described by the San Jacinto, Texas Sheriff’s Office.
Inside the house there were ten people and five lost their lives. The deceased are Daniel Enrique Lazo, 9 years old; Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25 years old; Diana Velasquez Alvarado, 21; Obdulia Molina Rivera, 31, and José Jonathan Cáceres, 18 years old.
Wilson García, a survivor of the massacre that lost his son and his wife, declared this Monday before the press that the scene “was horrible” and that now he feels like being dead in life.
According to what he recounted, two of the victims died protecting their two other children from the bullets, aged one and a half years and one month, respectively. García had to escape through the window and the assailant went after him, but did not find him as he hid among some pine trees.
