Wilson Garcia who lost wife, Sonia Argentina Guzman, and son in Texas mass shooting tells storyMass shooting survivor Wilson Garcia becomes emotional during a vigil for his son, Daniel Enrique Laso, Sunday, April 30, 2023, in Cleveland, Texas. Garcia’s son and wife were killed in the shooting Friday night. The search for a Texas man who allegedly shot his neighbors after they asked him to stop firing off rounds in his yard stretched into a second day Sunday, with authorities saying the man could be anywhere by now.
The suspect fled after the shooting Friday night that left multiple people dead, including the young boy. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
CLEVELAND, Texas (AP) — Wilson Garcia hadn’t even asked his neighbor to stop shooting his gun.
People in their rural town north of Houston are used to people firing their weapons to blow off steam, but it was late Friday night, and Garcia had a month-old son who was crying.
So, Garcia said, he and two other people went to his neighbor’s house to “respectfully” ask that he shoot farther away from their home.
He told us he was on his property, and he could do what he wanted,” Garcia said Sunday after a vigil in Cleveland, Texas, for his 9-year-old son who was killed in the attack that soon followed.
The suspect, 38-year-old Francisco Oropeza, remained at large late Sunday despite a search involving more than 200 police from multiple jurisdictions.
Garcia called the police after Oropeza rejected his request. The man shot some more, and now it sounded louder. In the neighborhood of homes on 1-acre lots, Garcia could see the man on his front porch but couldn’t tell what he was doing.
His family continued to called police — five calls in all, Garcia said. Five times the dispatcher assured that help was coming.
And then, 10 to 20 minutes after Garcia had walked back from Oropeza’s house, the man started running toward him, and reloading.
“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 gunman walked up to the home and began firing. Garcia’s wife, Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25, was at the front door, and the first to die.
The house held 15 people in all, several of them friends who had been there to join Garcia’s wife on a church retreat. The gunman seemed intent on killing everyone, Garcia said.
Also among the dead were Garcia’s son, Daniel Enrique Laso, and two women who died while shielding Garcia’s baby and 2-year-old daughter. Garcia said one of the women had told him to jump out a window “because my children were without a mother and one of their parents had to stay alive to take care of them.”
“I am trying to be strong for my children,” Garcia said, crying. “My daughter sort of understands. It is very difficult when she begins to ask for mama and for her (older) brother.”
Police went door to door Sunday in hopes of finding any clues that would lead them to the suspect. Gov. Greg Abbott put up $50,000 in reward money and local officials and the FBI also chipped in, bringing the total to $80,000 for any information about Oropeza’s whereabouts.
“I can tell you right now, we have zero leads,” James Smith, the FBI special agent in charge, told reporters while again asking the public for tips in the rural town north of Houston where the shooting took place just before midnight Friday.
