The search for a Texas man who allegedly shot his neighbors when they asked him to stop shooting in their yard was extended to a second day Sunday, and authorities said the suspect could be anywhere by now.
Francisco Oropeza, 38, fled the scene Friday night after a shooting that left five dead, including an eight-year-old boy. San Jacinto County Police Chief Greg Capers said late Saturday that authorities had expanded the search radius to 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the scene.
Investigators found clothing and a cell phone while searching a rural area that included areas of dense forest, but the dogs lost their trail, Capers said.
Police recovered the AR-15 that Oropeza allegedly used in the shootings, although authorities were not sure if he was carrying another weapon, the police chief said.
“Now I could be anywhere,” he said.
The attack near Cleveland, north of Houston, on a street where, according to some residents, it is not unusual to hear neighbors firing firearms.
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 adds to a wave of violent firearms incidents that has broken records for the frequency of mass shootings in the United States so far this year, in some cases with semi-automatic rifles.
Mass homicides have taken place in places as disparate as 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.
Three children covered in blood were found in the house and were taken to a hospital, although they were unharmed, Capers said.
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, residents of the home 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 recorded him approaching the door with the rifle, he added.
The incident occurred on a bumpy rural street, with one-story houses on sprawling lots of about half a hectare (one acre) and 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.
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