After a days-long manhunt, authorities reported that a suspect who is accused of murdering shooting five people at a neighbor’s home in Texas last week, including a mother and her 9-year-old son, was captured Tuesday evening.
According to the San Jacinto County Sheriff’s Office, Francisco Oropesa, the suspect, was discovered in a home not far from the Cleveland, Texas, residence where the crimes took place.
Mexican national Oropesa was “caught hiding in a closet underneath some laundry”, Sheriff Greg Capers said during a press conference on Tuesday night.
He is not hurt, and he is already being transported to my facility in Coldspring, Capers continued. “They effectively made the arrest,” he said.
The FBI Houston office tweeted that Oropesa was discovered in the nearby city of Conroe, contradicting the San Jacinto County Sheriff’s Office’s claim that he was apprehended in the village of Cut and Shoot.
According to the sheriff, the defendant will be imprisoned on five murder charges with a $5 million bond.
According to police, Oropesa, 38, is accused of carrying out the atrocity on Friday night after being told to stop firing his gun close to a neighbouring house. When Oropesa’s mobile stopped working on Saturday night, investigators said they had lost track of him.
The whereabouts of the suspect was eventually discovered thanks to a report received through the FBI’s tip line, according to Jimmy Paul, assistant special agent in charge. According to Paul, the tip was received at 5:15 p.m. local time, and Oropesa was taken into custody at 6:30.
We just want to express our gratitude to the person who had the guts to report the suspect’s whereabouts, he said.
Law enforcement officials followed Oropesa’s wife to a home close to Cut and Shoot after acting on the tip, a law enforcement source said CNN. This home was connected to one of his family members. It wasn’t immediately obvious whether that occurred before or after the FBI tip.
The suspect was taken into custody when members of the Texas Department of Public Safety, the US Marshals Service, and the Border Patrol Tactical Unit, or BORTAC, of US Customs and Border Patrol broke into the house, according to an FBI Houston spokesperson.
According to San Jacinto County District Attorney Todd Dillon, who spoke to CNN on Tuesday night, authorities are currently looking into whether the suspect received assistance in hiding.
According to a law enforcement source involved in the inquiry, Oropesa will show up in front of a magistrate in San Jacinto County on Wednesday. According to the source, the suspect must be charged within 90 days.
The Mexican consulate will formally be informed of Oropesa’s situation on Wednesday, the source claims.
Authorities have been pleading with the public to come forward with any information for days and have committed a significant amount of resources to finding the perpetrator, including more than 250 police officers and a $80,000 reward for information that results in his capture.
Although Oropesa’s current immigration status is unknown, an ICE source who identified him as Francisco Oropesa Perez-Torres said that he had entered the US illegally and had been deported at least four times since 2009. He was first deported by an immigration judge in March 2009, after which he was sent back in September 2009, January 2012, and July 2016, according to the source.
The source claims that it is unknown how long Oropesa has been in the US following his most recent expulsion.
Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25, and her son Daniel Enrique Laso-Guzman, 9, along with Diana Velázquez Alvarado, 21, Julisa Molina Rivera, 31, and José Jonathan Cásarez, 18, have been named as the victims. They are all citizens of Honduras.
How the assault developed
According to Wilson Garcia, whose wife and kid were killed, there were fifteen people present in the home in Cleveland, an 8,000-person city northeast of Houston, including friends and godparents who had come to assist prepare for a church function.Garcia told CNN that around 10 to 20 minutes prior to the atrocity, he and two other people went over to Oropesa’s yard to request that he stop firing so close to their house because Garcia’s infant was sleeping. The father claimed that they had urged Oropesa to shoot on the opposite side of his land.
Garcia stated he would call the police when the guy refused.
Garcia recounted, “When we walked in, my wife was talking to the police, and we called five times because he was being more threatening.”
The father added, “We spotted him, he was leaving his property and cocked his revolver. He cocked his gun, and I advised my wife to get inside because he might come and threaten us. Because I’m a woman, my wife reasoned, “I don’t think he will fire at me, so you go inside. I’ll stay here at the door.”
Shortly after, the shooter burst into Garcia’s house and fatally shot his wife, Sonia Argentina Guzman, in the doorway before killing three other adults and Garcia’s son, Daniel Enrique Laso-Guzman, according to the distraught father.
Garcia told CNN that “one of the people who died saw when my wife fell to the ground.”
She advised me to hang myself from a window because my kids were already motherless. Therefore, one of us had to live to care for them. She was the one who assisted me in scaling the window.
He claimed that the woman who assisted Garcia in escaping died.
Garcia sobbed as she added, “Two people who died were protecting my 2 1/2-year-old daughter and my 1-month-old son.” They covered him in garments to prevent the murderer from killing him as well. So try to picture how we are feeling right now. That was awful.
San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers told local media that when authorities arrived, they discovered the victims had been shot “almost execution style” at close range above the neck.
According to Capers, authorities arrived to the site as quickly as they could. The home is roughly 15 minutes outside of town, but he claimed that his little force patrols a sizable county.
“I feel like a part of me left with her,”
Argentina Guzman’s loved ones tried to express their sorrow while the relatives of the victims grieved.
German Guzman, her brother, told CNN that the agony he is experiencing is “unexplainable,” and he continued, “It’s difficult to know people who are very close to you are gone, very difficult.”
“I feel like a piece of me left with her. Her mother, Francia Guzman, expressed her feeling that a piece of her heart was broken.
The mother remarked, “With God’s blessing, she’ll come back in a coffin so I can say goodbye even though she won’t ever respond, even though she can no longer speak to me.”
Officials in Honduras have stated that they are getting ready to send the victims’ remains home.
“The Government of Honduras deeply laments the loss of these precious souls and shares the suffering of all of their loved ones. The Honduran Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying, “We demand that the relevant authorities arrest the perpetrator of this terrible event and apply the full force of the law.”
“The only thing I want is for them to be returned so they can rest where they were born, so they can rest forever, and they will be in a place where at least I can take them a flower,” said Francia Guzman.
