#Francisco Oropeza accused of killing 5 neighbors captured, official says

The man accused of killing five of his neighbors with an AR-15 rifle in their Texas home was apprehended by law enforcement agents Tuesday, officials said.

Francisco Oropesa, 38, was taken into custody around 7 p.m. without incident, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said.

He was apprehended in Cut and Shoot, Texas, San Jacinto County District Attorney Todd Dillon said.

Dillon had initially said authorities are awaiting fingerprints to confirm the person arrested is Oropesa. Oropesa has been taken to the Montgomery County Jail and is charged with first-degree murder, he said.

The FBI said it was planning a news conference Tuesday evening about the case.

The arrest brings an end to the sprawling search that involved more than 250 law enforcement officers, the FBI and a reward of $80,000 for information.

The arrest comes four days after the Friday night carnage in which Oropesa went to the home in the Trails End area in Cleveland, about 45 miles north of Houston, and opened fire, the San Jacinto County Sheriff’s Office said.

Oropesa allegedly opened fire on neighbors after one complained that shots coming from his adjacent property were keeping an infant from sleeping, officials have said.

Wilson Garcia’s wife asked him to go to Oropesa’s residence and ask if he would stop shooting or move the gunfire. The request didn’t seem unreasonable, Garcia said, as they’d been on good terms with Oropesa.

“So we went and told the man to please stop shooting, or go continue shooting further away from the house. But he answered by saying he was in his property and could do whatever he wants,” Garcia told NBC News.

“I said, ‘OK that’s fine. It’s your property, but could you please move further away or turn it down, that’s all,'” Garcia said. “Then he began insulting us and we told him we were calling the cops.”

The victims, all believed to be from Honduras, have been identified as: 9-year-old Daniel Enrique Laso; Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25; Diana Velazquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31; and Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18.

Garcia has identified Laso as his son and Guzman as his wife and the child’s mother.

Officials said the four adult victims were pronounced dead at the scene and the 9-year-old died at a hospital. Three other children were found in the home and may have been saved by two women who draped their bodies over them, Capers said. The sheriff said that he believed 15 rounds were fired in the attack.

Cut and Shoot, where the person was arrested Tuesday, is a community of around 1,000 just east of Conroe, around 16 miles west of the Cleveland area where the killings took place.

The apprehension comes two days after investigators said they had been running into dead ends, with “zero leads.”

The FBI said Tuesday that law enforcement was analyzing “hundreds of pieces of information from all over,” and digital billboards in the Houston area showed Oropesa and the reward. There had been plans to expand the billboards statewide. 

It’s not immediately clear how Oropesa eluded police for days.

Searchers on Saturday found the suspect’s cellphone and some of his clothing, but scent-tracking dogs eventually lost his trail.

Capers also said that authorities seized the rifle used in the attack, but that the suspect may have still been armed with a handgun. 

Gov. Greg Abbott said in a news conference Sunday that the gunman had been deported from the U.S. four times and was back in Texas illegally. 

A host of agencies assisted in the search for Oropesa including FBI Houston, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Gulf Coast Violent Offenders Task Force, Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Rangers.