“Five-time murder suspect arrested in Texas after fatally shooting neighbors complaining about assault rifle sound”

US authorities announced on Tuesday the arrest in Texas of the man suspected of having shot and killed five people, including a 9-year-old child, who had simply complained about the sound of his assault rifle.

“We have this man in custody. He was captured hiding in a closet under some clothes,” San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers said at a press conference. “Francisco Oropesa has been captured. He was arrested tonight (Tuesday) at around 6:45 p.m. (1:45 a.m. in Switzerland) in a house” north of Houston, the local FBI office said in a tweet.

He is accused of having opened fire in the night from Friday to Saturday inside a house in Cleveland, near Houston, killing five people, all from Honduras and aged 9 to 31 years old.

More than 250 local and federal agents had been looking for the suspect for several days in this state in the southern United States where firearms abound. The authorities had offered a bounty of $80,000 for any information leading to his whereabouts.

“I just want to thank whoever had the courage and bravery to call and provide the location of the suspect,” FBI Agent Jimmy Paul said at the press conference.

Entering the country illegally, Francisco Oropesa had already been deported from the United States to Mexico four times, according to a source within the migration authorities quoted by CNN. Taken into custody, his bond was set at five million dollars, Sheriff Capers said.

“Execution”

According to local authorities, the suspect was practicing shooting in his garden when neighbors asked him to stop the noise so that a baby could sleep. In response, he walked into his neighbors’ house and shot “execution-like, basically in the head” of several residents, said San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers. Among the survivors, three children “covered in the blood of the women who had lain on them to protect them” were discovered and rescued, he added.

This news item aroused strong emotion in the United States and in Honduras, a small country in Central America where the young victims were from. It is part of a recent tragic succession of banal interactions that degenerated into bloodbaths in the country. In April, a 20-year-old woman was fatally shot in New York state after she mistakenly pulled into the driveway of a private home.

The same month, in Texas, a man opened fire on cheerleaders after one of them tried to open the door of his car, which she had mistaken for his own vehicle. A black teenager was shot and seriously injured after going to the wrong house in Missouri.

Prayers ‘not enough’

On Sunday, Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott posted a tweet, condemned by his opponents, in which he called the victims “illegal immigrants”. But on Monday, Greg Abbott’s office went back on his remarks, saying that “one of the victims may have legally resided in the United States”, according to a press release quoted by American media.

This elected official, very critical of the Democratic administration of President Joe Biden on migration issues, has sparked other controversy in recent months by ferrying migrants who entered illegally to Democratic strongholds in the United States by bus.

“Prayers alone are not enough. Congress must act,” said White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre on Monday, calling for better control of firearms.

The Honduran Minister of Foreign Affairs, Enrique Reina, for his part demanded that the suspect answer for his actions “according to all the rigor of the law”.

The United States has more personal weapons than people, and they cause more than 130 deaths a day, more than half of which are suicides.

(AFP)