The suspected shooter of the Texas rampage who killed five with an AR-15 rife last week has been apprehended from a “laundry” room in a house after rigorous searching authorities said Tuesday.
The suspect Francisco Oropesa, 38, was hiding in a house nearly 20 miles from the crime scene in the city of Cut and Shoot, Texas, bringing the manhunt to a conclusion.
The information received by the FBI at 5:15 pm led to Oropesa’s arrest at 6:30 pm, said Jimmy Paul, the assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Houston field office, at a press conference.
He said: “We just want to thank the person who had the courage and bravery to call in the suspect’s location.”
Last week shooting claimed five lives including a nine-year-old kid in Cleveland, Texas, Friday night after a family member asked him to stop shooting as an infant was trying to sleep, officials have said.
San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers said Oropesa will be charged with five counts of murder and is being held on a $5 million bond.
“He was caught hiding in a closet underneath some laundry,” he said Tuesday.
The arrest of the suspected shooter comes four days after he went to his neighbour’s house and started killing people in the Trails End area of Cleveland, about 45 miles north of Houston, the sheriff’s office said.
Officials said Oropesa started shooting after a person complained that gunfire coming from his adjacent property was keeping an infant from sleeping.
Wilson Garcia’s wife asked him to go to Oropesa’s and ask him to shoot somewhere else if he is not stopping the gunfire. It was not something unreasonable as they were having good terms with Oropesa.
Garcia said: “So we went and told the man to please stop shooting or go continue shooting further away from the house. But he answered by saying he was on his property and could do whatever he wants.”
Garcia added: “I said: ‘OK that’s fine. It’s your property, but could you please move further away or turn it down, that’s all. Then he began insulting us, and we told him we were calling the cops.”
The people who were dead are believed to be from Honduras and identified as Daniel Enrique Laso, 9; Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25; Diana Velazquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31; and Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18.
San Jacinto County District Attorney Todd Dillon said: “Oropesa’s wife filed a protective order against him last year alleging he beat her. She said he was drunk and hit her with a closed fist, kicked her on the floor and threatened her.”
Supervisory Deputy US Marshal Joe Ruiz de Chavez said the killings were “an atrocious crime that devastated this community and this country.”
He said: “This is a very sad time for the victims, and I hope that this will bring them some comfort and they can grieve.”
