Sheriff’s officers of San Jacinto County, in the southeast of this US state, were called to a “harassment” and subsequent shooting, where four “victims were killed (…) and others were seriously injured in the shooting.” According to a statement posted on Facebook by the local sheriff’s office.
The eight-year-old child was pronounced dead at the hospital where the three injured were taken, the same source added.
There were 10 people in the home, and the victims were all from Honduras, the sheriff said in a news conference 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 fleeing suspect, according to the sheriff, is “a Mexican man.”
He was practicing shooting in his backyard with his AR-15 assault rifle — used in many shootings across the country — when a neighbor told him to stop so a child could sleep, prompting him to turn the gun on them. ABC News quoted the sheriff and a neighbor.
The US pays a very high price for the proliferation and ease of access to firearms in its territory. The country has more personal firearms than residents: one in three adults owns at least one gun and nearly one in two adults lives in a household with a gun.
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