Police in Texas were conducting a massive manhunt Monday, May 1, to find a gunman suspected of killing five people, including a 9-year-old child, who had simply complained about the sound of his assault rifle. .
More than 250 local and federal agents were looking for this suspect, a Mexican identified as Francisco Oropeza, in this southern state of the United States where guns abound. Considered armed and dangerous, the shooter “can be anywhere”, warned, during the weekend, the sheriff Greg Capers, in charge of the investigation. Authorities offered an $80,000 bounty for any information leading to the location of this “monster,” as FBI Special Agent James Smith called it.
The FBI has confirmed that the hunt is continuing and asked the media to respect the mourning of the families of the victims.
The 38-year-old gunman is suspected of opening fire Friday night into a home in Cleveland, near Houston, killing five people, all from Honduras and aged 9. at age 31. The sheriff had initially mentioned a deceased 8-year-old boy.
Wilson Garcia, one of the survivors, lost his 9-year-old son and his wife, along with “two other people, who died protecting my 2½-year-old daughter,” he said. “I have no words to describe what happened”, “it was horrible”, testified, deeply moved, the father who escaped through the window.
According to local authorities, the suspect was practicing shooting in his garden when neighbors, including Wilson Garcia, asked him to stop the noise so that a baby could sleep. In response, he walked into his neighbors’ house and shot “execution-like, basically in the head” of several residents, Sheriff Capers said.
Among the survivors, three children “covered in the blood of the women who had lain on them to protect them” were discovered and rescued, he added.
This news item aroused strong emotion in the United States and in Honduras, a small country in Central America where the young victims were from. It is part of a recent tragic succession of banal interactions that degenerated into a bloodbath in the country. In April, a 20-year-old woman was fatally shot in New York state after she mistakenly drove into the driveway of a private home.
That same month, in Texas, a man opened fire on cheerleaders after one tried to open the door of her car, which she mistook for her own vehicle. A black teenager was shot and seriously injured after going to the wrong house in Missouri.
On Sunday, Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott posted a tweet, condemned by his opponents, in which he called the victims “illegal immigrants.” This elected official, very critical of the Democratic administration of President Joe Biden on migration issues, has sparked other controversy in recent months by ferrying migrants who entered illegally to Democratic strongholds in the United States by bus.
“Five human beings have lost their lives and Greg Abbott goes out of his way to call them ‘illegal immigrants,'” tweeted outrage Julian Castro, former housing minister to Barack Obama and former mayor of the Texas town of San Antonio.
Honduran Foreign Minister Enrique Reina called for the suspect to be held accountable “to the full extent of the law”.
The United States has more personal weapons than people, and they cause more than 130 deaths a day, more than half of which are suicides.