The man on the run for allegedly killing five people inside their Texas home has been identified as a Mexican national who was reportedly deported four times.
Francisco Oropesa, 38, has been apprehended and deported by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement was first deported in March 2009, sources told ABC News.
Oropesa was then deported again in September 2009, and another time in January 2012 after he was convicted in Montgomery County for driving while intoxicated, sources said.
He was last deported in July 2016, and it remains unclear what his current immigration status is or when he came back into the country.
There are now more than 250 law enforcement officers on the hunt for Oropesa, who is considered armed and dangerous after he fled the bloodbath inside the Cleveland home, about 50 miles north of Houston.
Survivor and grieving father Wilson Garcia said he and his wife confronted Oropesa on Friday night after he was allegedly shooting his gun while drunk from his yard. The neighbors had complained that the gunfire had woken their baby.
When the gunman refused, Garcia said he called the police five times, but it was Oropesa who arrived at his home armed with an AR-style rifle.
“I told my wife, ‘Get inside. This man has loaded his weapon,’” Garcia said. “My wife told me to go inside because ‘He won’t fire at me. I’m a woman.’”
The gambit however, failed, and Sonia Guzman, 25, was the first person to be slain in the rampage.
Garcia said that after his wife fell to the ground, it was his son, Daniel Enrique Laso, 9, who rushed to try and help her.
“He died because he wanted to defend his mother,” Garcia told NBC’s Today.
Along with the mother and son, police identified the other victims as Diana Velazquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31; and Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18.
San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers noted that Alvarado and Rivera had used their bodies to protect three children, who were found uninjured but covered in blood inside the home.
He added that all five victims were shot from the neck up, “execution-style.”
During the massacre, Garcia said, one of the women demanded he jump out a window to escape the carnage.
Garcia said the victim told him he needed to survive “because my children were without a mother and one of their parents had to stay alive to take care of them.”
The heartbroken husband said that even though the gunman tried shooting him, with bullets flying everywhere, he was somehow able to avoid getting hit.
Garcia has now launched a GoFundMe page to help bring his wife and son’s bodies back to their native Honduras.
Authorities have yet to comment on the immigration status of the victims, but at least one, Alvarado, was confirmed to be a permanent US resident.
Capers said he is not focused on the immigration issue because his attention is dedicated to finding justice for the heroic Daniel and the other victims.
“My heart is with this… little boy,” Capers said at a press conference Sunday fighting back tears. “I don’t care if he was here legally. I don’t care if he was here illegally. He was in my county.”
There is currently a combined $80,000 reward from Texas and the FBI for any critical information on Oropesa’s whereabouts.
When asked by reporters if he thinks Oropesa will be caught, Garcia could only say, “I hope so.”
