A man who killed five of his neighbors in the United States with an assault rifle was arrested in a closet

Cowards face shooting with women and children, but not with the police. On Friday evening, Francisco Oropeza, who liked to shoot in the yard, answered his neighbors’ pleas with an AR-15 assault rifle from the Texas town of Cleveland due to a change of environment, because she woke up her newborn. “We asked him respectfully, but he told us that he does whatever he wants on his property,” said one of them, Wilson García. When police found him hiding in a closet under a pile of clothes on Tuesday afternoon, he did not resist.

This is how he ended up, on $1 million bail, frantic chase by 250 agents hunt down this 38-year-old Mexican, deported four times after entering the US illegally several times, who killed five Hondurans in a fit of rage. Among them were three women, a 9-year-old boy and an 18-year-old boy.. The governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, preferred to call them “five illegal immigrants”, which provoked a barrage of criticism on social networks, where he was also proven wrong: at least one of the victims, Diana Velázquez Alvarado, was a legal resident of the United States, where worked as a community activist and advocated for immigrant rights. Her husband provided a copy of his green card so others could respond to the governor. San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers was indifferent to her. “I don’t care if they were legal or illegal. They were in my county and that’s where my heart is, to protect the people of my county as best as possible.” Capers failed them too. The family called the police three times before the neighbor shot them – the sheriff claims he only has three men for the larger area of 1000 square kilometers.

Shot women and children

When Wilson Garcia saw his neighbor arrive with a semi-automatic rifle, he told his wife to come inside. “No, you come in,” she replied, “He won’t shoot a woman”. He was the first victim. His friend, Sonia Argentina Guzmán, told him the news and pushed him to jump out of the window. “Your children are already motherless, someone has to survive to take care of them.” Immediately afterwards, she herself received another fatal bullet, as did her son Daniel, who was only nine years old. His friends Diana Velázquez Alvarado (21) and Julisa Molina Rivera (31) died while protecting the couple’s one-month-old baby and five-year-old girl, who they hid under a pillow, as well as 18-year-old Jose Jonathan Casarez. Three more children who witnessed the scene were injured.

The police tracked down the criminal through a mobile signal, but a few hours later the trail disappeared. It was a citizen’s call, encouraged by an $80,000 reward offered for any information about him, which allowed him to find himself in a house only 18 kilometers away. His partner Divamara Lamar Nava and two friends were arrested for helping him escape.