(Houston) Authorities in Texas were conducting a massive manhunt on Monday to find a gunman suspected of killing five people, including an 8-year-old child, who had simply complained about the sound of his assault rifle.
More than 200 local and federal police were looking for this suspect, a Mexican identified as Francisco Oropeza, in this southern state of the United States where guns abound.
Considered armed and dangerous, he “can be anywhere”, warned during the weekend the sheriff Greg Capers, in charge of the investigation, during a press briefing.
Authorities offered an $80,000 bounty for any information leading to the location of this “monster,” as FBI Special Agent Jams Smith called it.
The 38-year-old gunman is suspected of opening fire Friday night into Saturday inside a home in Cleveland, near Houston, killing five people, all from Honduras, aged 8 at age 31.
In response, the suspect allegedly entered his neighbors’ home and shot, “execution-like, essentially in the head” of several residents, Sheriff Capers said.
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.
On Sunday, Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott posted a tweet, condemned by his opponents, in which he called the victims “illegal immigrants”.
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 by bus to Democratic strongholds in the United States.
The United States has more small arms than people, and they cause more than 130 deaths a day, more than half of which are suicides.
