Francisco Oropesa Pérez-Torres, the man who murdered five people in cold blood in his Cleveland, Ohio, neighborhood on Friday, entered the United States illegally several times and was deported four times, according to Immigration Department data. It is unknown if he actually had his papers in order in Texas before he went on the run. More than 200 officers are searching for the shooter, who disappeared from the scene after killing four adults and a 9-year-old boy with shots at close range and above the neck, according to the police report.
The reward is $80,000 for any information leading to the arrest of Oropesa, deported in March 2009 for the first time. Later, he was expelled from the country in September 2009, January 2012 and July 2016, a 38-year-old Mexican who was asked by his neighbors not to shoot the rifle so close to him when he was trying to put his little son to sleep .
Far from paying attention, Oropesa entered his neighbor’s house and caused the massacre, the umpteenth so far this year in the US. According to the Gun Violence Archive data, 248 people have lost their lives in 2023 in 184 shootings. About 10 to 20 minutes before the shooting, Wilson Garcia and two other men approached the shooter’s house to convince him not to make so much noise with his gun, but he refused.
Shortly after, he left armed in the direction of the García home. “We went in and my wife was talking to the police. We called five times because he was getting more and more aggressive,” Garcia explained. “We saw him, he was coming off his property and he loaded his gun,” he said. “I told my wife to come in because she could come to threaten us. Then my wife said: ‘You come in. I don’t think he’s going to shoot me because I’m a woman. I’m staying here at the door.'”
Oropesa had no compassion for the woman, whom he shot to the head, or for the children who were inside the house. Two of the murdered women died protecting two of García’s children, a two-and-a-half-year-old girl and a month-old baby. If not, they may no longer be alive. Police officers have described it as an execution-style massacre.
One of the deceased women told Garcia to jump out of the window to flee, that children could not be left without a father after losing their mother. “She’s the person who helped me jump out the window,” Garcia later testified.
Oropesa’s whereabouts remained unknown Monday afternoon, after authorities confirmed Sunday they had no leads to follow. “We don’t know where he is,” said the FBI agent in charge of the investigation, James Smith. “Right now we have zero leads.” The search is going door-to-door around the rural town of 8,000, about 50 miles north of Houston, on suspicion that the killer has fled to Mexico.
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