WASHINGTON – Five people of Honduran nationality, including an 8-year-old boy, were killed yesterday, Friday, in a shooting at a home in San Jacinto County (Texas), about 90 kilometers from Houston, the Sheriff’s Office reported today. that Texas county.
The shooter, a Mexican national, was on the run and may be armed with an AR-15 assault rifle, a weapon used in many of the shootings in recent years, San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers, at a press conference hours after the event.
Capers explained that the victims were shot in the neck and head, as if it were an “execution.”
The suspect has been identified as Francisco Oropeza, 39, and has been charged with five counts of murder, Capers told The Washington Post.
The suspect was known in the neighborhood because he liked to shoot in his backyard with an AR-15 rifle, Capers said in his appearance before the press.
As Capers explained, the suspect broke into his neighbors’ home after they asked him to stop shooting in the garden with his rifle because it was too late and a baby was trying to sleep.
Inside the house there were 10 people. Of the five deceased, three were women, one was a man and the last was an eight-year-old boy, Capers said.
When they arrived at the house, the agents found the adults already dead, while the minor was transferred by helicopter to a hospital, where he died.
Three other children were taken to the hospital, covered in blood, but are not injured, Capers told The Washington Post.
Two women protected the children with their bodies
When the police arrived, they saw how two of the deceased women were in the bedroom of the house and their bodies were on top of two of the children who survived, in an apparent attempt to protect them from the bullets, Capers explained in that appearance before the press. .
Local authorities are offering a $5 million reward to anyone with information leading to the arrest of the shooter, the San Jacinto County Sheriff’s Office said on Facebook.
The sheriff’s office is in possession of the suspect’s consular card and also has video of him walking to his neighbors’ house to shoot them.
Capers told NPR radio that officers are looking for the shooter “every minute of every hour” and hope to find him soon.
According to CNN, the suspect is about 20 kilometers from where the event occurred, in a wooded area, and the police have him surrounded.
Sheriff’s deputies knew something was up when they received a tip Friday night.
They immediately went to the house; But, while they were on their way, the county communications center began receiving multiple calls from the 911 emergency number alerting that a shooting was taking place in the place where the agents were going.
When officers arrived at the home, the shooting had already occurred and the suspect had fled.
According to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), a nonprofit project that tracks gun violence in the United States, so far in 2023 there have been 174 mass shootings.
GVA defines a mass shooting as one that ends with four victims, whether dead or wounded, not including the perpetrator of the attack if he died or was injured during the event.
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