As survivors and the community came together at a vigil, hundreds of law enforcement officers were searching for Francisco Oropesa. The victims were all from Honduras, officials said. Gov. Greg Abbott’s office said that Mr. Oropesa and [Wilson] Garcia and his family were all in the United States illegally.
Also:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation identified those killed as Mr. Garcia’s wife, Sonia Guzman, 25; Diana Velazquez Alvarado, 21; Juliza Molina Rivera, 31; Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18; and Daniel Enrique Laso, 8.Two of the women were killed while protecting Mr. Garcia’s baby and 2-year-old daughter by embracing them and covering them with clothing, Mr. Garcia said at the vigil.
He said that when Mr. Oropesa refused to stop shooting in his yard, he warned him that he would call the police, and did so five times.
The baby and the 2-year-old survived, protected by 2 of the women who died. The father survived.
After one woman saw Mr. Garcia’s wife being shot, she urged Mr. Garcia to jump out a window, he added, “because my kids were without a mom already and needed at least one parent.”
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70 comments:
Feelings over structure. Short term gain, long term loss.
Oropesa, the murderer, was in the country illegally, if I'm reading that right. He's who we want stopped at the border before entering.
The bravery of the women protecting (and saving) the babies is heartrending. A compassionate and enforced border policy would've let the family in legally. They could've called the police with confidence. I hate to think of their horrible neighbor terrorizing them while they may have hesitated due to their status.
That they were here illegally is important information in helping to find the murderer. It tells of their recent history and who they might have come in contact. Why should this information be ignored for the political purposes of attacking government officials?
Talking about the immigration status of the deceased would seem to be changing the subject. I wondered when I first read this if this had been the first time the killer had been shooting off his rifle in the back yard and if the police had prior warnings and hadn't done anything. Was he a lone wolf or a known wolf? I have to say, though, confronting a drunk who's waving a rifle around to ask him to stop shooting it, that takes cojones (also probably very stupid but perhaps they felt they had no other choice).
Whenever you need a cop, he's always only 10 minutes away.
I am sure everyone shares these sentiments. Better still, would be if we had some semblance of control over who emigrates to the US. I happen to believe that more people often result in more prosperity, and I would favor pretty high levels of immigration. However, I would like these people to be vetted and controlled. A country is the product of its culture, not its geography, so the people who live here determine what the culture is. We need to make good choices about what we want our country to be going forward, and who we allow to move here will have a huge impact on what we become. This incident is one reminder of that.
When a country does not enforce minimal standards for law and order, it will not have effective laws or order.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/crime-rate-by-country
As shown in the global map above, some compassionate European countries have extremely low crime rates because the locals maintain high standards. But look at Sweden -- same tier as the USA. Sweden's politics are different from neighboring and ultra-compassionate Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Iceland...as are the crime rates.
You didn't mention that the shooter had been deported multiple times. True empathy would not omit or downplay the fact that with proper border security, that 8-year-old boy might still be alive.
Classic Althousian type deflection. I don’t care where the sheriff’s heart is and neither should you. What’s important is where your elected officials heads are…or rather where they need to be extracted from…
Remember the killer is an invited guest of our elected officials.
Left out was the unfortunate factoid that the killer was thrice deported. Only the best and brightest are allowed in you know by Team Joe.
Sad about the family but when animals are allowed to roam unfettered, this is the result. Cultural enrichment of methods to resolve disputes. But the father running away - “I had to save myself for the others” rings pretty hollow.
I'm guessing the odds are quite high the perpetrator is back in Mexico. This possibility has no doubt occurred to the police, but what to do, and how to proceed?
"He said that when Mr. Oropesa refused to stop shooting in his yard, he warned him that he would call the police, and did so five times."
In a high-trust society, calling the police would've been the appropriate thing to do. We don't live in that society anymore, we live in one where you have to call the police 5 times.
When you create incentives to commit crimes some people become emboldened to commit more crimes and/or more serious crimes. We created a class of people who act as if they are above the law because they are above the law…
Click for more...
Does not mean Click for more pertinent information.
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Does not mean Click for more pertinent information.
The truth is, we have opened our borders to the drug cartels. It's more obvious in the rural counties than in the cities.
A huge problem with the Biden policy of encouraging illegal immigration is that we now have an underclass of people who are incredibly vulnerable to crimes. Liberals should think about that when you criticize walls or other attempts to keep immigration legal and open and above-board, as opposed to sneaking in and living an underground life.
Naturalizing everybody who is here illegally doesn't solve the problem, of course. It just encourages still more people to cross the border and became an underground class of people. The Biden administration (and the Obama administration before them) have fantasies about all those people being future socialist voters, but that hasn't happened and it's not likely to happen anytime soon.
It reminds me of the original justification of Roe v. Wade. Readers of the opinion are well aware that the Court's goal was to get rid of single moms. There are multiple passages in the Court's opinion that talk about how bad it is to be a single mom. And so Roe goal was to free those women (if they wanted to be free of an unwanted child) by giving them a right to abort pregnancies. Single moms were a tragedy, and a right to abortion would make everybody happy.
What happened instead (of course) is that more and more people got sloppy with birth control, and abortions skyrocketed and single moms skyrocketed too.
All the cheerleading for illegal immigration from the left greatly increased the number of illegal immigrants. The cheerleading for "choice" greatly increased the number of single moms (and dead babies). Liberals push for change all the time, but they have a history of not thinking about unintended consequences. What liberals call "reactionary" politics from the right is often just an honest assessment of a fuck-up that needs to be fixed.
We have a large underclass of people here who are scared to call the police, because they are criminals. And they are criminals because Barack Obama and Joe Biden gave them a pep talk and basically sold them on the idea that the crime was not a big deal.
Two of the women were killed while protecting Mr. Garcia’s baby and 2-year-old daughter by embracing them and covering them with clothing, Mr. Garcia said at the vigil.
Amazing heroes. God bless them. People who sacrifice their lives to save the innocent are united with Christ and are in heaven now.
What did the police do, when they were 'called 5 times"? It's illegal for an illegal immigrant to be armed, and cause for immediate deportation if they're armed and shooting off their weapons in a residential neighborhood. The very act, by itself, is illegal - for anyone.
What did the police do, when they were 'called 5 times'?
I think the democrats should re evaluate the political benefits of allowing open access to the US. We allow people in for asylum, because their lives are at risk in Honduras. What a joke. If they cluster in segregated places it is like living in Honduras anyway. Politicians are too stupid to understand unintended consequences.
My mama always said, "Illegal immigration is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get."
What kind of man dives out a window to save his life while women (including his wife) and his children are being murdered?
That's toxic masculinity.
Oh what a brave new world we live in...
"My heart is with this 8-year-old little boy."
Telling comment after an illegal alien who returned illegally commits an illegal act against other illegal aliens.
Too bad American hearts don't care enough to keep the killers out. In fact, those who want the invasion stopped are also considered heartless.
"he would call the police, and did so five times"
Spread the word among the "migrants": you're not safe here.
Gov. Abbott's office was just stating a fact. They were all illegals. FACT.
And Abbott's office now has a massive manhunt for the illegal that murdered them all. So being legal or illegal does not matter to Abbott as for justice.
And who let all those illegals in? Oh, Brandon!
Read the whole post, not just the post title. There are many elements highlighted in the post. The victims and the shooter were all in the country illegally. The father is the survivor telling the story. All the other witnesses are dead. The shooter seems to have escaped on foot. The police have "zero leads."
It seems unsympathetic to question the father's story...
Oh I believe him. Why admit to cowardice if you're going to lie?
I have very little sympathy for him. I reserve mine for the murdered women and children.
"He said that when Mr. Oropesa refused to stop shooting in his yard, he warned him that he would call the police, and did so five times."
That sentence is ambiguous in a way that I'm now convince I misread. I thought Garcia warned Oropesa 5 times, but now I think Garcia warned Oropesa once. What he did 5 times was call the police. Obviously, the police have a record of how many times he called and, presumably, a recording of what was said.
We don't know for sure what Garcia said to Oropesa.
I read the whole post.
Is it illegal to shoot guns in your backyard in this town/city/county?
I bet it is.
This is what happens when the lose the Rule of Law.
Did the shooter go back to Mexico?
Deshaney Vs. Winnegago County & Warren Vs. District of Columbia
The police are under no obligation to protect you or your loved ones. Even if such substantial case law and precedent didn't exist, have the police ever been anything more than grief mops?
I'd say this guy should've armed himself before calling the cops, but he's illegal. Then again, being illegal hasn't stopped anyone from getting a gun before either. Maybe if none of them had been here this wouldn't have happened, but saying so will probably put on a watchlist somewhere.
I've been through Cleveland many times- a small city of about 8000 souls an hour north of Houston. The more relevant fact is that it's a ~6 hour drive from the Mexican border. He's has 2.5 days to disappear, and I'm confident that that is where he has disappeared to.
CBS News led with this story on their a.m. broadcast. They did not mention that legal status of the victim or the shooter. I infer that all were of questionable legal status, and it's relevant in that the victims may have been reluctant to call authorities for help, and the shooter was known to authorities and was here illegally.
Headlines are all about the rifle.
No he warned him five times. That's the way I read it. Why would he call the police 5 times? Once would be enough.
"He said that when Mr. Oropesa refused to stop shooting in his yard, he warned him that he would call the police, and did so five times."
THis brings up the another point if called the police 5 times, why not just write that. Why talk about "warning" and tack on the more important fact calling the police in a passive way at the end?
Oh gosh, every one matters, even illegals. Lets get out our hankies, and feel good about oursevles.
And keep that cheap labor coming. Mommy needs a cheap nanny and cleaning lady!
This is just one more consequence of a political movement that is big on feeling and disastrous on policy. I would posit that this is true of almost every major leftist policy.
From their hearts they might feel that the people coming to our border are desperate and in need of our compassion. That might very well be true, but the solution they have is more of a knee-jerk reaction against the right's position that immigrants come here legally. They create a false dichotomy - We either let them in illegally or ruthlessly turn them away to let them suffer.
There is a better solution and that is to increase our legal immigration numbers. That is well within the Democrats power. One needs to ask, why they can't do that. If we can allow millions in at the border, we can allow millions in legally. Why do they not simply change the quotas? Is it because it allows them to use the illegal immigrants as pawns. Think about that. Think about the pure evil of that position. The pain, suffering and other impacts to their current method of trying to paint the Republicans as racist. Why is this a necessary strategy?
Her are just some of the evils that result for a policy of encouraging illegal immigration:
-Knowing that one can cross the border unscreened means:
--Drug dealers will cross
--Terrorists will cross
--Criminals will cross
--People with untreated diseases will cross
Do you think that only desperate poor would exploit such an opportunity? Wouldn't this be MORE exploited by the people with connections and incentives to cross that the poor do not have?
-Other impacts:
--Drugs are ferried across
--Coyotes make a lot of money exploiting the desperate
--Women and children are sexually exploited
--Children in cages
--Drug kingpins (who manage the cross border traffic from the south side) Get rich off the exploitation of the desperate.
--In central America, the Darien gap is one of the most remote and lawless places, so immigrants coming up from South America are subject to even worse exploitation and abuse from drug lords than the ones in Mexico.
-In America
--I laughed when I saw how Inga was castigating Nunes and his family for hiring Illegal immigrants. Exactly what does she expect those immigrants to do? Starve? You can't both encourage illegal immigration and then get upset at them doing work. Here is the better solution. Have LEGAL immigration and then they can work without all the hand wringing.
--Inability to have access to proper support
--Fear of deportation keeps them in the shadows
--Have to work for less.
--Drives down wages for other workers.
I am sure there are other things I am missing. The point is, there is a solution that can eliminate all these evil things, but the Left WANTS to perpetuate this evil.
What exactly is the upside to encouraging illegal immigration?
I could run a similar list for many other left policies, but this one is one of the worst.
Tom T. said...
You didn't mention that the shooter had been deported multiple times.
and a habit of shooting his illegal rifle. One wonders if the local LEO are told not to question immigration status, even of people shooting up the neighborhood
This story is EXACTLY the reason I personally own guns.
When you call the police FIVE times about a man illegally shooting a rifle in a residential neighborhood, and they never show up, then your safety is clearly your own responsibility.
You can certainly choose to not own a gun, but then you leave yourself completely at the mercy and whim of an armed perp.
I choose to protect my family because I am competent enough and thoughtful enough to bear arms safely. YMMV.
Catastrophic Anthropogenic Immigration Reform (CAIR).
Similarly, prosecutorial discretion, transgender conversion therapy, medical liberal license, systemic DIEversity, abortion, etc.
The status of the victims is irrelevant to their value as humans.
The status of the killer is totally relevant, presuming that he really was deported three times but then tolerated when he reestablished himself in the USA.
We need to be able to decide who can come and who can't. This man was known to be one who should have been kept out. That's relevant to the story.
"No he warned him five times. That's the way I read it. Why would he call the police 5 times? Once would be enough."
Why would he warn him 5 times? When I read it and believed that's what I read, I thought the father was taking a huge risk of aggravating and scaring the man. If everyone was subject to deportation, then there's a hesitancy to call the police and also a far greater threat if the police are called. To warn, in this case, is to threaten. Why would you threaten a man who's already wielding a gun in an unfriendly manner?
If everyone were a citizen, then the warning about calling the police would just mean the police might stop by and tell the man that there are some complaints about noise, but maybe there wouldn't be any law against that noise.
Here's an article "On The Edge Of Suburbia: Where Noise Pollution And Gun Rights Collide" (at Guns and America).
If there's no relevant law, then why would the police visit?
Nothing justifies the murder spree, of course. I'm just trying to understand what happened and how the shooter got away on foot.
It is extremely unlikely that they were living in an area where it would be legal to shoot a gun. The article you linked to shows very large rural properties where neighboring houses are not even visible. These were poor illegal immigrants. They were most likely not living on sprawling rural estates, but right next door to one another.
To Gov. Bill Lee: Want To Solve The Problem?
Years ago I wrote on a three-time loser in my former state of Florida who blasted a Marshal coming to serve a warrant. He had gone to prison for carjacking. They let him out, and, having obviously learned his lesson he decided to next commit a criminal sexual assault on a minor. Obviously the penalty for carjacking was insufficient to drill into his head that he wouldn't get away with violent felonies; the evidence for this was his second serious felony offense.
...
not just once but twice the so-called "justice" system let a violent man out to commit more violent felonies.
But the second sort of murder isn't this kind of offense. It is the sort that occurred at Covenant in Nashville, a few days later in Colorado, in Florida a number of years ago and similar. These are the crimes where people talk about "red flag" laws and such as a "countermeasure."
...
There a man who had been deported at least twice, and thus was a felon (unlawful re-entry after deportation is a felony offense) somehow managed to acquire a place to live and several guns which he could not legally buy -- and had been there for the last several years. The police were called several times because he liked to drink to excess and shoot said guns unsafely. They responded and either never ran his jacket or, if they did, they deliberately ignored what they knew -- that he not only was a prohibited person since he was not a US Citizen or lawful permanent resident he was also, adjudicated or not, a felon.
I feel like this is an instance of democrats trying to create a Republicans pounce moment. All the reporting I've seen has emphasized the killer's status, not the victims. So they create a false perception to paint conservatives as heartless.
There's an article in the NY Post that clarifies things. He did call the police five times. His wife told him that she would confront the gunman because she was a woman and he would not shoot her. The police said they had three officers patrolling a territory of seven hundred square miles on duty at the time of the call.....The MSM is trying to make this an argument for gun control. Hardly. Why would a law against guns work any better than a law against illegal immigrants?...I read somewhere that the country with the highest gun murder rate is in Central America (?El Salvador?). I'm pretty sure that they have strict gun control laws there such laws only exacerbate the situation when there are that many criminals on the streets.
The Garcia family needed to arm themselves. They apparently called the police five times about Francisco Oropesa and his gun shooting. Of course, being illegal aliens themselves, they would have been unable to purchase firearms legally. So, they were unarmed when Francisco Oropesa decided to murder them with his illegally obtained firearm. The Garcia household was a gun-free zone, like most US schools, just like gun control advocates want.
Murder is murder. The point to take away from identifying the people as illegals is not that the murders are less important, but that with adequate border enforcement they wouldn't have happened.
Lefty "logic" clouds issues.
Naturalizing everybody who is here illegally doesn't solve the
=========
why not just green card? and no Naturalizing
"The truth is, we have opened our borders to the drug cartels. It's more obvious in the rural counties than in the cities."
Fentanyl (and/or its precursors) comes across our southern boarder. Nearly twice as many Americans died from fentanyl overdoses last year as were killed in the twenty years we fought in the Vietnam War. Where are the protests on our college campuses? Where are the marches? The sit-ins? The walk-outs? The boycotts?
I'm just trying to understand what happened and how the shooter got away on foot.
Most likely he called a friend who picked him up in their vehicle after he fled the area and is almost certainly back in Mexico.
Ann Althouse said...
"Nothing justifies the murder spree, of course. I'm just trying to understand what happened and how the shooter got away on foot."
Depends on the police response time. How well he knows the area and if he has any acquaintances nearby.
You can cover a lot of ground in ten minutes.
My wife has informed me that the fleeing felon left his phone, but my guess is still that he contacted someone, somehow who helped him. Perhaps he had a burner. Perhaps he called someone before abandoning his phone. No doubt the police are interviewing all of his known associates that they can find.
Like always the initial news accounts focused on the gun, an AR platform.
Not the shooter or victims. The constant beat of the drum attempting do push a solution,(ban guns) regardless if the proposed laws would do nothing to stop these murders.
That's why its important to focus on the criminal, and victims.
This will be classified as a mass shooting. A meaningless data point. While accurate, meaningless to use in the crime debate.
I've had the same wonder about the guy here who killed his wife and absconded to central America with their daughter. Was he in the country legally? Nothing in the local paper about that. It doesn't change the outcome of his actions, but it does make me wonder about reporting.
Had they called the police 5 times that day or had they previously called the police about the man shooting next door on 5 different occasions?
The Sheriff is a politician. He failed to protect these families and he failed to apprehend the killer. He doesn't want the press talking about those failures, so he deflects by giving the press what they love, some tasty, tasty narrative treats about racism, bigotry, xenophobia and hate, basically throwing Texans in general under the bus to save himself.
"Mr Garcia also revealed that the family had made five separate calls to police in the 10 to 20 minutes between the initial confrontation and the massacre unfolding."
From the Independent. Makes sense.
Victim should have posted a video of the neighbor shooting on 4Chan then the FBI would have seen it for sure right away and maybe done something, like recruit the shooter to work on their next cosplay event or something. Any gun control nuts want to hazard a guess on how many gun laws this shooter broke BEFORE turning killer? Final question for gun control nuts: what law would you have passed that the shooter WOULD have obeyed in your opinion?
Diversity is our strength.
/sarcasm
Those aiding and abetting illegal immigration have more blood on their hands.
This is a big political win for Kamala Harris! With Texas law enforcement now softening their stance on enforcing immigration (because of this incident), her non-actions regarding immigration look prescient.
Old
That would follow, the shooting being close enough to keep the baby awake and the father could walk, "next door".
Wonder what the Mexican cops might want him for?
If a cartel ships him back, do they get a cut of the $80k plus a Good Citizen Award
Clyde.
Think they care?
The shooter should be executed and all survivors should be deported.
This is not difficult...
Joe Smith said...
The shooter should be executed and all survivors should be deported.
This is not difficult...
5/1/23, 2:50 PM
THIS^^^
Posthumous empathetic bullshit.
So much for gun control. It didn't stop the thrice-deported illegal alien from getting a long gun. Didn't stop him from firing said long gun. It didn't capture him after he massacred that family. Illegal alien advocates are accessories to this crime.
Were they all asylum seekers and if so what was their status? Of course there is a US embassy in the Capitol of their home country where they could have applied. And stayed alive as they awaited disposition. Then again they may not have had a case for asylum and simply came across our “border.”
If your neighbor is firing his shotgun (likely the ownership by an illegal is illegal even in Texas) I recommend waiting him out or bringing him a bottle of tequila.
The shooter likely entered Mexico illegally.
We need more stringent gun control laws for illegal aliens.
--I laughed when I saw how Inga was castigating Nunes and his family for hiring Illegal immigrants. Exactly what does she expect those immigrants to do? Starve?
@Wa St. Blogger, Inga is apparently unaware that it would have illegal for Nunes to ask for proof that the immigrants were here legally. You can ask whether they are legally allowed to work in the US. In fact, you pretty much have to ask everyone, even if you know the individual personally and are fully aware of that person’s citizenship status, lest you be sued for racial discrimination.
What you cannot do is ask to see proof of eligibility to work in the US. That is illegal under the Immigration Reform and Control Act. As a union official Inga would be aware of that; she’s just trying to get in some cheap shots at Nunes because she’s an asshole.
Big Mike: "What you cannot do is ask to see proof of eligibility to work in the US. That is illegal under the Immigration Reform and Control Act. As a union official Inga would be aware of that; she’s just trying to get in some cheap shots at Nunes because she’s an asshole."
I don't believe you should underestimate the possibility that Inga could simply be that dumb.
But we'll let her address the question directly to find out for sure.
Big Mike: "What you cannot do is ask to see proof of eligibility to work in the US. That is illegal under the Immigration Reform and Control Act. As a union official Inga would be aware of that; she’s just trying to get in some cheap shots at Nunes because she’s an asshole."
I don't believe you should underestimate the possibility that Inga could simply be that dumb.
But we'll let her address the question directly to find out for sure.
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