- Police say a man shot and killed five people after they asked him to stop shooting from his porch.
- The victims had asked the suspected gunman to quiet down as they had a baby trying to sleep.
- The youngest victim is an 8-year-old child. The suspect remains on the loose, according to KTRK-TV.
Neighbors came to a Texas man’s fence and asked him to stop firing his gun in his yard because they had a baby next door who was trying to sleep.
In response, police say the man drunkenly went next door and killed five people with an AR-15-style rifle, ABC News reported. He remains at large.
It is the latest in a string of shootings resulting from seemingly normal and even mundane interactions.
In Kansas City, 16-year-old Ralph Yarl was shot in the head after he accidentally went to the wrong house to pick up his younger siblings. In New York, a 20-year-old woman was shot and killed after she and her friends pulled their car into the wrong driveway.
Authorities from the San Jacinto County Sheriff’s Office told KTRK-TV, a local ABC News affiliate in Houston, that the yet-unnamed suspect had been drunk and firing shots from his front porch in Cleveland, Texas. At about 11:30 pm on Friday, neighbors intervened.
“My understanding is that the victims, they came over to the fence and said ‘Hey could [you not do your] shooting out in the yard? We have a young baby that’s trying to go to sleep,'” Sheriff Greg Capers told KTRK. “And he had been drinking, and he says ‘I’ll do what I want to in my front yard.'”
That’s when the agitated man retaliated, police said.
When police arrived on the scene, at least 10 people were in the home, several of whom had been shot “from the neck up almost execution style.” Five victims are dead, including an 8-year-old child, KRTK reported. Three others are injured, and their condition is unknown, KHOU-11, another local TV station, reported.
“When we got here, the two females in the bedroom were laying on top of two of three younger (surviving) children,” Capers told KTRK. He added that the victims were “trying to take care of the babies and keep them babies alive,” according to ABC News.
The sheriff said the suspect had a history of shooting from his property, which they determined by all the shell casings laying around his front yard.
Neighbors in Cleveland were told to “stay inside” and “stay clear” of the scene as authorities work to locate the suspect.
A judge has issued an arrest warrant and a $5 million bond in the case, KTRK reported.
“We are getting closer to him every minute of every hour, but we know who he is,” Capers said, per ABC.
