Police in Texas have launched a manhunt since Monday for a man who killed five people, including a 9-year-old child, after they complained about the noise he made while firing his rifle.

More than 250 local and federal agents are searching for the gunman, a Mexican man identified as Francisco Oropesa.

The FBI confirmed yesterday that it was still searching for Oropesa and asked the media to respect the mourning of the victims’ families.

The wanted man is considered armed and dangerous and could “be anywhere,” Sheriff Greg Capers, who is in charge of the investigation, warned over the weekend.

Authorities are offering $80,000 for any information leading to the identification of this “monster,” as FBI Special Agent James Smith called him.

“It was horrible”

The 38-year-old gunman reportedly went on a shooting spree Friday night inside a home in Cleveland, a small town near Houston, Texas, killing five people, all of whom were of Honduran descent, aged 9 to 31. .

Having entered the US illegally, Oropesa had been deported to Mexico four times, according to an immigration source cited by CNN: twice in 2009 and again in 2012 and 2016.

Wilson Garcia, a neighbor of the attacker and one of the survivors of the massacre, lost his 9-year-old son and his wife, as well as “two other people who died protecting my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter,” he explained.

“I have no words to describe what happened”, “it was horrible”, he emphasized. He himself managed to escape through the window of the house.

According to authorities, the gunman was practicing shooting with his gun in his garden when Garcia and two others asked him to continue practicing farther so his 30-day-old infant could sleep.

“He told us that he is at home and can do whatever he wants,” continued Garcia, who added that he called the police five times and was assured that help was coming.

Oropesa then entered Garcia’s home and began shooting bystanders “as if he was executing them, with a bullet to the head,” Sheriff Capers said.

Among the survivors were three children “covered in the blood of women who had fallen on them to save them,” he added.

In addition to Garcia’s 9-year-old son, his wife Sonia Argentina Guzman, Diana Velazquez Alvarado, 21, Julisa Molina Rivera, 31, and Jose Jonathan Casares, 18, were killed.

Series of incidents

The incident has shocked the US and Honduras and is one of a series of similar incidents that have occurred in the US in recent weeks.

In April, a 20-year-old woman was shot to death in upstate New York when she accidentally walked into her garage. That same month in Texas, a man opened fire on a group of cheerleaders when they mistook his car for theirs and tried to open the door. In addition, an African-American teenager was seriously injured when he got the address wrong and knocked on the door of a man’s home in Missouri.

On Sunday, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted that the victims of the Cleveland massacre were “illegal immigrants.” But on Monday he partially retracted, with his office noting that “one of the victims may have been in the US legally.”

“Five people died and Greg Abbott called them ‘illegal immigrants,'” Julian Castro, a former secretary to President Barack Obama and former mayor of San Antonio, Texas, tweeted.

“Prayers alone are not enough. Congress must take action,” White House spokeswoman Karin Jean-Pierre said yesterday, calling for a stricter regulatory framework for firearms.

“The majority of Americans and gun owners support taking reasonable steps to reduce violence (…) There is time to save lives and prevent the next mass murder,” he added.

Honduran Foreign Minister Enrique Reyna demanded that the perpetrator be held accountable for his actions.

There are more guns in the US than people. Firearms are responsible for more than 130 deaths per day, more than half of which are suicides.