A four-day manhunt in Texas for a gunman accused of killing five neighbors ended Tuesday not far from the site of the shooting when authorities, acting on a tip, said they found the suspect hiding underneath a pile of laundry in the closet of a house.
Francisco Oropesa, 38, was captured without incident near Houston and about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from his home in the rural town of Cleveland, where authorities say he went next door and shot his neighbors with an AR-style rifle on Friday night after some of them had asked him to stop firing rounds in his yard because it was keeping a baby awake.
He will be charged with five counts of murder, San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers said. Bond was set at $5 million.
“They can rest easy now, because he is behind bars,” Capers said of the families of the victims. “He will live out his life behind bars for killing those five.”
The arrest happened near Conroe, ending what had become a widening dragnet that had grown to more than 250 people from multiple jurisdictions. As recently as Tuesday morning, the FBI said that Oropesa “could be anywhere,” underlining how investigators for days struggled to get a sense of his whereabouts and candidly acknowledged they had no leads.
The tip that finally ended the chase came at 5:15 p.m., and a little more than an hour later, Oropesa was in custody, said FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jimmy Paul. The alleged shooter is a Mexican national who has been deported four times between 2009 and 2016, according to U.S. immigration officials
Connor Hagan, an FBI spokesman, said they would not disclose the identity of the person who called in the tip — one of more than 200 tips he says investigators received. Authorities did not say who owned the house, whether Oropesa knew them or if anyone else was inside when he was found.
Hagan said the three agencies that went in to arrest Oropesa were the U.S. Marshals, Texas Department of Public Safety and US Border Patrol’s BORTAC team.
Drones and scent-tracking dogs had been used during the widening manhunt, which included combing a heavily wooded forest a few miles from the scene. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott offered $50,000 in reward money as the search dragged late into the weekend.
Capers said that prior to Friday’s shooting deputies had been called to the suspect’s house at least one other time previously over shooting rounds in his yard.
All of the victims were from Honduras. Wilson Garcia, who survived the shooting, said friends and family in the home tried to hide and shield themselves and children after Oropesa walked up to the home and began firing, killing his wife first at the front door.
The victims were identified as Diana Velazquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31; Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18; Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25; and Daniel Enrique Laso, 9.
A government official in Honduras said the remains of four of the victims would be repatriated. Velásquez Alvarado will be buried in the United States at the request of her sister and her husband, said Wilson Paz, general director of Honduras’ migrant protection service.
Osmán Velásquez, Diana’s father, said Tuesday that his daughter had recently gotten residency and had traveled to the United States without documents eight years ago with the help of a sister, who was already living there.
“Her sister convinced me to let her take my daughter. She told me the United States is a country of opportunities and that’s true,” he said. “But I never imagined it was just for this.”
Garcia said Oropesa came running over to their house on Friday loading an AR-style rifle after he and two other people had asked him to stop firing off rounds late at night. Garcia said Oropesa told him he could do what he wanted on his property.
In offering the reward, Abbott called the victims “illegal immigrants,” a partially false statement that his office walked back and apologized for Monday after drawing wide backlash over drawing attention to their immigration status. Abbott spokesperson Renae Eze said they had since learned that one of the victims may have been in the country legally.
