Gunman kills 5 neighbours who complained about shooting noise, Texas police say

A Texan went next door with a gun and shot five neighbors, including an eight-year-old boy and a teenage girl, after the family asked them not to shoot in their yard because they were trying to sleep, authorities said. said there.

The suspect, identified as 38-year-old Francisco Oropeza, remained at large more than 12 hours after the shooting that began just before midnight near the small city of Cleveland, about 72 kilometers north of Houston. Some residents who live on the street say it’s not uncommon to hear their neighbors relaxing on a work weekend by shooting guns.

San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers said the suspect used an AR-style rifle and that all the victims were believed to be from Honduras.

Capers said authorities are using scent-tracking dogs and an overhead drone to search for the suspect, who they believe was intoxicated at the time of the shooting and then fled into dense woods several kilometers from the scene.

Capers said there were 10 people in the house – some of whom had just moved in earlier in the week – but no one else was injured.

Authorities did not immediately release the victim’s name. Three were women, including a 15-year-old girl, said Rob Freyer, prosecutor in San Jacinto County. He did not know the age of the adult victims, who included one male.

The confrontation began after a family member walked over to the fence and asked the suspect to stop firing rounds, Capers said. The suspect responded by telling them it was his, the sheriff said, and one person in the home got video of the suspect walking up to the front door with a gun.

‘Normal’ recreational shooting

Rene Arevalo Sr., who lives a few houses down, said he heard gunshots around midnight but thought nothing of it.

“It’s a regular thing that people do here, especially on Fridays after work,” Arevalo said. “He came home and started drinking in the backyard and took it there.”

Capers said deputies have been to the suspect’s home at least once before and talked to him about “shooting a gun in the yard.” It was not immediately clear whether any action was taken at the time.

The new arrivals in the house had moved from Houston at the beginning of the week, the sheriff said, but did not know if they were planning to stay there.

Record pace of US gun violence

The attack was the latest act of gun violence in a record number of mass shootings in the United States so far this year, some involving semiautomatic rifles.

Mass murder has played out in a variety of places – a Nashville school, a Kentucky bank, a Southern California dance hall and now a rural Texas neighborhood in a one-story house.

In the US since January 1, there have been at least 18 shootings that have left four or more people dead, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today, in cooperation with Northeastern University. Violence is triggered by various motives: murder-suicide and domestic violence; gang revenge; school shootings; and workplace vendettas.

Texas has faced multiple mass shootings in recent years, including last year’s attack at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde; the racist attack at the El Paso Walmart in 2019; and gunmen opened fire on a church in the small town of Sutherland Springs in 2017.

Republican leaders in Texas have repeatedly rejected calls for new gun bans, including this year over protests by several families whose children were killed in Uvalde.