A Texas man went next door with a rifle and fatally shot five of his neighbours, including an eight-year-old boy and a teenage girl, after the family asked him to stop firing rounds in his yard because they were trying to sleep, authorities said Saturday.
The suspect, identified as 38-year-old Francisco Oropeza, remained at large more than 12 hours after the shooting that began just before midnight on Friday near the small city of Cleveland, about 72 kilometres north of Houston. Some residents who live on the street said it was not uncommon to hear neighbours unwind at the end of the work week by firing off guns.
San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers said the suspect used an AR-style rifle and that all of the victims were believed to be from Honduras.
Capers said authorities were using scent-tracking dogs and an overhead drone in the search for the suspect, who they believe was intoxicated at the time of the shooting and then fled toward a heavily wooded forest a few kilometres from the scene.
Capers said there were 10 people in the house — some of whom has just moved there earlier in the week — but that no one else was injured.
Authorities did not immediately release the names of the victims. Three were female, including a 15-year-old girl, said Rob Freyer, a prosecutor in San Jacinto County. He did not know the ages of the adult victims, who included one male.
The confrontation began after family members walked up to the fence and asked the suspect to stop shooting rounds, Capers said. The suspect responded by telling them that it was his property, the sheriff said, and one person in the house got a video of the suspect walking up to the front door with the rifle.
Recreational shooting ‘a normal thing’
Rene Arevalo Sr., who lives a few houses down, said he heard gunshots around midnight but didn’t think anything of it.
“It’s a normal thing people do around here, especially on Fridays after work,” Arevalo said. “They get home and start drinking in their backyards and shooting out there.”
Capers said his deputies had been to the suspect’s home at least once before and spoken with him about “shooting his gun in the yard.” It was not immediately clear whether any action was taken at the time.
The new arrivals in the home had moved from Houston earlier in the week, the sheriff said, but he did not know whether they were planning to stay there.
Record pace of U.S. gun violence
The attack was the latest act of gun violence in what has been a record pace of mass shootings in the United States so far this year, some of which have also involved semiautomatic rifles.
The mass killings have played out in a variety of places — a Nashville school, a Kentucky bank, a Southern California dance hall and now a rural Texas neighbourhood inside a single-storey home.
U.S. gun manufacturing executives are facing tough questions in Washington following mass shootings in Buffalo, N.Y., and Uvalde, Texas.
Across the U.S. since Jan. 1, there have been at least 18 shootings that left four or more people dead, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today, in partnership with Northeastern University. The violence is sparked by a range of motives: murder-suicides and domestic violence; gang retaliation; school shootings; and workplace vendettas.
Texas has confronted multiple mass shootings in recent years, including last year’s attack at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde; a racist attack at an El Paso Walmart in 2019; and a gunman opening fire at a church in the tiny town of Sutherland Springs in 2017.
Republican leaders in Texas have continually rejected calls for new firearm restrictions, including this year over the protests of several families whose children were killed in Uvalde.