In the US state of Texas, a man shot five people with an assault rifle in his neighboring house, including an eight-year-old child. As the authorities announced on Saturday, the victims, who come from Honduras, were killed during the night in a house near Houston. The suspect, who comes from Mexico, is on the run.
As media reported, the shooter had made shooting exercises with his assault rifle in his garden on Friday evening. When his neighbors asked him to stop because a baby couldn't fall asleep, the man freaked out.
As the sheriff of San Jacinto County, Greg Capers, announced, the neighbors called the police around 23:30 p.m. local time. When the officers arrived, they were presented with a terrible picture: in the house they found four dead and several seriously injured. Four people were taken to hospital, where an eight-year-old child succumbed to his injuries. At the time of the crime, there were ten people in the house.
Targeted headshots
The victims, according to the sheriff, lay throughout the house, from the front door to a bedroom. Two young children, lying among two women who were killed, survived the bloodbath. Capers told ABC's local station KTRK that the women saved their children by protecting the little ones with their own bodies. The attacker had literally executed his victims, most of them by shots to the head. The man was therefore drunk and is said to have said to his neighbors: "In my front yard I can do what I want."
"All the victims were from Honduras," Capers said at a news conference. The attacker, who comes from Mexico, is being sought. An arrest warrant had been issued against the 39-year-old suspect for five counts of murder, police said. Presumably, he had left the country. Nevertheless, all people living in the vicinity of the crime scene should stay at home as a precaution. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) also launched a manhunt and warned against approaching the man.
The foreign minister of Honduras, Enrique Reina, demanded that the perpetrator must feel "the full force of the law". His country is following the case with great concern, he said on Twitter.
Gun violence is a major problem in the United States. According to the prevailing interpretation, the right to own weapons is enshrined in the Constitution, there are more guns than inhabitants in the country: one in three adults owns at least one gun, and almost one in two adults lives in a household where a gun is present.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been more than 170 gun attacks this year, killing or injuring four or more people.