The search for a Texas man who allegedly shot his neighbours, stretched into a second day on Sunday, with authorities saying the man could be anywhere by now. Francisco Oropeza, 38, fled after the shooting on Friday night that left five people dead, including an 8-year-old boy. San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers said on Saturday evening that authorities had widened the search to as far as 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the scene of the shooting. Investigators found clothes and a phone while combing a rural area that includes dense layers of forest, but tracking dogs lost the scent, Capers said.
Police recovered the AR-15-style rifle that Oropeza allegedly used in the shootings but authorities were not sure if he was carrying another weapon, the sheriff said. “He could be anywhere now,” Capers said.
The attack happened near the town of Cleveland, north of Houston, on a street where some residents say neighbours often unwind by firing off guns. Capers said the victims were between the ages of 8 and 31 years old and that all were believed to be from Honduras. All were shot “from the neck up,” he said. The attack was the latest act of gun violence in what has been a record pace of mass shootings in the US so far this year, some of which have also involved semiautomatic rifles.
The mass killings have played out in a variety of places — a Nashville school, a Kentucky bank, a Southern California dance hall, and now a rural Texas neighbourhood inside a single-story home.