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A man shot dead 5 of his neighbors including an 8-year-old boy at a house in Cleveland, Texas after some of them asked to stop shooting as the noise was keeping their baby awake, police said on Saturday, in the latest mass shooting in the US. Investigators believe the gunman had been firing his AR-15-style gun in a neighboring yard when the victims asked him to stop. The authorities went to the residence after receiving a call about “harassment” around 11:30 pm on Friday.
Describing the horrifying scene, San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers told the media that the victims, aged from 8 to 40, were strewn from the front door through the house to an inside bedroom. Two women were seen lying on top of two children who were most likely protecting their children – who survived the massacre.
“In my opinion, they were actually trying to take care of the babies and keep them alive,” Capers was quoted by news agency AFP.
All the victims had been shot “from the neck up almost execution-style, basically in the head,” he added.
The victims were identified as Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25, Diana Velazquez Alvarado, 21, Julisa Molina Rivera, 31, Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18, and Daniel Enrique Laso, 8. They were all believed to be living in the house, but were not members of a single family, according to the FBI, reported Reuters. All the victims were from Honduras and at the time of the shootout there were 10 people in the house.
The suspect – Francisco Oropeza, 38 – had been drinking and started shooting rounds in his front yard, which is when some of the victims stepped out to confront him, Capers said.
Both the parties then went back to their houses. Oropeza “topped off his magazine, and walked down his driveway” onto the street then “into the people’s house and started shooting,” Capers was reported as saying by Reuters.
On a couple of occasions, the police have been called to Oropeza’s house on previous occasions over complaints about the noise he was making shooting his gun in his yard.
Capers said that they tracked him with dogs, men on horseback as well as drones in the air. They found an abandoned cell phone and discarded clothing in the search area.
Enrique Reina, the foreign minister of Honduras, said the Honduran consulate was in contact with the authorities in Texas.
“We demand that the full weight of the law be applied against the person responsible for this crime,” he wrote on Twitter.
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