Five people, including an eight-year-old child, all from Honduras, were killed overnight from Friday to Saturday at a home near Houston, Texas, authorities said, who are actively looking for the suspect.
According to the first elements given by the sheriff, the man was practicing shooting in his garden when neighbors asked him to stop the noise at night so that a baby could sleep, which would have prompted him to turn the weapon against them.
Called for “harassment” and then for shooting, sheriff’s officers in San Jacinto County, in the south-east of this American state, found four lifeless bodies on the spot. Four people were taken to hospital, including an eight-year-old child who also died.
Among the ten Hondurans who were in the house, two children were found alive, hidden under the bodies of two women in a bedroom.
All of the victims were shot “like an execution, basically in the head,” Sheriff Greg Capers told local ABC station KTRK.
Suspect on the run
The suspect, on the run, is “a Mexican man”, declared the sheriff in a press briefing broadcast by the local channel KHOU 11. Wanted, he is the subject of an arrest warrant and has been charged with murder.
This news item is part of a tragic series of similar events in the United States, where firearms are wreaking havoc.
Earlier this month, a black teenager was shot and seriously injured after knocking on the wrong door of a Missouri home.
In New York State, a 20-year-old woman was shot and killed after driving by mistake into the driveway of a private home. And in Texas, a man opened fire on cheerleaders after one of them tried to open the door of her car, which she mistook for her own vehicle.
The United States has more individual weapons than inhabitants: one in three adults owns at least one weapon and almost one in two adults lives in a home where a weapon is found.
The consequence of this proliferation is the very high rate of firearm deaths in the United States, unmatched by that of other developed countries. Around 49,000 people died from gunshot wounds in 2021, compared to 45,000 in 2020, which was already a record year. This represents more than 130 deaths per day, more than half of which are suicides.