Texas residents ask neighbor to stop shooting in the middle of the night: five dead including a child
Steph Deschamps / April 30, 2023
Five people, including an eight-year-old child, all from Honduras, were killed Friday night in a house near Houston, Texas, authorities said, adding that the suspect, Mexican, is on the run.
Called in for "harassment" and then shooting, sheriff's officers in the southeastern U.S. state of San Jacinto County found four "victims killed (...) as well as others seriously injured by gunfire," according to a statement from the local sheriff's office posted on Facebook.
An eight-year-old child was pronounced dead at the hospital, where three other injured were transported, the same source added.
There were 10 people in the house, and all the victims are from Honduras, the sheriff said in a press briefing broadcast by local channel KHOU 11.
Among the survivors, two children were found alive under the bodies of two women in a bedroom, he said.
The suspect, who is on the run, is "a Mexican male" according to the sheriff.
He was practicing shooting in his backyard with his AR-15 assault rifle -- used in many shootings around the country -- when neighbors asked him to stop so a baby could sleep, prompting him to turn the weapon on them, according to the sheriff and a neighbor cited by ABC News.
The United States pays a very high price for the spread of firearms in the country and their easy access. The country has more individual guns than people: one in three adults owns at least one gun, and nearly one in two adults lives in a home with a gun.