The end of a manhunt. On Tuesday, May 2, US authorities announced the arrest of Francisco Oropesa on suspicion of the fatal shooting of five people. Among the victims is a 9-year-old child. According to the first elements of the investigation, the neighbors had simply complained about the noise of his assault rifle.
“We have this man in custody. He was caught [hiding] in a closet under some clothes,” San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers said at a press conference. “Francisco Oropesa has been captured. He was arrested [Tuesday] at approximately 6:45 p.m. [1:45 a.m. in France] in a house “north of Houston, the local FBI office said in a tweet. He is accused of opening fire on the night of Friday to Saturday inside a house in Cleveland, near Houston, killing five people, all from Honduras and aged 9 to 31 years old.
More than 250 local and federal agents had been looking for the suspect for several days in this state in the southern United States where firearms abound. Authorities had offered an $80,000 bounty for any information leading to his whereabouts. “I just want to thank whoever had the courage and bravery to call and provide the location of the suspect,” FBI Agent Jimmy Paul said at the press conference.
Entering the country illegally, Francisco Oropesa had already been deported from the United States to Mexico four times, according to a source within the migration authorities quoted by CNN. Taken into custody, his bond was set at five million dollars, Sheriff Capers said.
According to local authorities, the suspect was practicing shooting in his garden when neighbors 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 heads” of several residents, said San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers. 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 bloodbaths 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. The same month, in Texas, a man opened fire on cheerleaders after one of them tried to open the door of his car, which she had mistaken for his own vehicle. A black teenager was seriously injured by gunshot after being in 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.” On Monday, the governor’s office backtracked, saying “one of the victims may have legally resided in the United States,” according to a statement quoted by US media.
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. “Prayers alone are not enough. Congress must act,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday, calling for better regulation of firearms.
Honduran Foreign Minister Enrique Reina called for the suspect to be held accountable “to the full extent of the law”. Deputy Minister Tony Garcia told Agence France-Presse that one of the victims will be buried in the United States, and the other four will be repatriated to Honduras in the coming days, in accordance with the families’ wishes. 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.
