More than 200 officers from multiple law enforcement agencies are searching for the gunman accused of shooting and killing five people, including a 9-year-old child, at a Cleveland, Texas, home after neighbors asked him to stop firing his rifle outdoors, officials said Sunday.
Those officers are going door to door and asking community members for information while authorities are also creating billboard posters in Spanish to inform everyone of the search, San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers said in a Sunday afternoon news conference.
And there’s now also a collective $80,000 reward being offered for information that leads to the suspect’s arrest, FBI Houston Special Agent in Charge James Smith announced in the news conference.
Francisco Oropesa, 38, is accused of killing four adults and a 9-year-old boy at a neighboring home Friday night in the city of Cleveland – about 40 miles northeast of downtown Houston. Investigators initially started tracking Oropesa using his cellphone, but said that trail went cold Saturday evening – and he could now be anywhere.
“We don’t have any tips right now to where he may be and that’s why we’ve come up with this reward, so that hopefully somebody out there can call us,” Smith said at Sunday’s news conference.
“I can pretty much guarantee you, he’s contacted some of his friends,” Smith said, adding, “We just don’t know what friends they are and that’s what we need from the public, is any type of information because right now we’re running into dead ends.”
Nine-year-old Daniel Enrique Laso-Guzman was shot and killed. So were Sonia Argentina Gúzman, 25; Diana Velázquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31, and José Jonathan Cásarez, 18.
All five were shot “almost execution style” – above the neck at close range, the sheriff said.
Five other people who were home during the rampage were not hurt, Capers said. Three children were found covered in blood and were taken to a hospital, but were not injured.
Authorities believe two women died while using their bodies to shield the children who survived.
“The three children … were covered in blood from the same ladies that were laying on top of them trying to protect them,” the sheriff said Sunday. Those children are now safe and with family, he added.
