CLEVELAND, Tex. — Throughout the day, horses, chickens and cows roam through the vast, green pastures in a community known as Trails End. Kids ride bikes in the muddy road. And residents enjoy the sense of peace afforded by the San Jacinto County neighborhood’s proximity to nature and its detachment from more urban areas.
That calmness, however, is often broken by pounding bangs of gunfire. When the sun begins to set and liquor bottles begin to empty, “it sounds like a war zone — it’s that intense,” said Isabella Rodriguez, an 18-year-old whose grandmother and cousin live in the same community where a gunman killed five last week.
Late on the night of April 28, bullets began spraying close to a home where four families had gotten together to have dinner and enjoy each other’s company. Amid the ruckus, a six-week-old baby dissolved into tears and seven other children grew fearful — prompting a call to police. Before authorities were dispatched, four men, all members of an extended family, approached the chain link fence separating their yard from Francisco Oropesa’s and asked him to shoot further away.
Minutes later, police said, Oropesa walked into the home where the families had gathered and opened fire with an AR-15-style weapon — killing three women, a man and a 9-year-old boy “execution style.” After a four-day manhunt marked by bungles and dead ends, Oropesa was arrested Tuesday and was charged with five counts of murder. He has neither entered a plea nor retained an attorney.
In a rural town where guns are an ubiquitous part of life, the massacre sent shock waves of fear and grief. Even if gunshots ring every night, residents said they’d rarely resulted in bloodshed, particularly after such an innocuous interaction between neighbors. The attack became one of the latest in an incessant wave of gun violence across the nation. So far this year, the Gun Violence Archive has tallied 192 mass shootings in the United States, which the group defines as a shooting involving four or more people, not including the shooter, being injured or killed — although experts note those do not represent the majority of gun deaths.
The shooting also marked the seventh attack sparked by seemingly everyday exchanges in April alone — something, experts previously told The Washington Post, that resulted from a mix of factors: the availability of guns, misconceptions about stand-your-ground laws, the marketing of firearms for self-defense and growing fears among Americans about deteriorating safety, regardless of reality.
Gun violence experts blamed those factors — along with stretched-thin local policing resources and Texas’s flagrantly loose gun laws — for the San Jacinto County shooting. It’s a cocktail of social conditions that “act like a vicious circle,” said Daniel Webster, a professor with the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions.
“It’s always a combination of changes in laws and culture,” Webster said. “It’s a set of lethal ingredients.”
‘You hear “boom boom boom” every night’
Before tragedy struck, Friday was filled with laughter and celebration. Wilson García and his wife, Sonia Guzmán, a 25-year-old mother of three, had waved goodbye to some of the family members who had assembled for a get-together. The music was turned off, chairs were brought inside and children were put to bed — then, around 11 p.m., the gunshots began, stopped for a few minutes and began all over again, neighbors said.
“When I heard those gunshots I didn’t think anything of it because in this neighborhood everyone has guns. Every weekend, one hears gunshots,” said Vianey Balderas, a resident of Trails End. “People shoot in their backyards after they drink alcohol, and men take out guns at house parties and shoot at the ground.”
For others, though, there was something different about the last set of at least 10 shots.
“You hear ‘boom boom boom’ every night there,” Rodriguez said. “But my grandmother told me, ‘these ones sound like death.’”
Sonia Guzmán had called police to report the gunshots coming close to her home. As she stood by the door waiting for authorities, Oropesa arrived and shot her first, said her brother, Ramiro Guzmán. Then, he said, the gunman unleashed a barrage of bullets that sent the other 15 people inside running, shielding children and scrambling for cover. Ramiro said he hid inside a closet with his wife and six-month-old son, from which he said he desperately called 911 at least five times. Each time, he added, emergency operators told him officials were already on-site. “Then why is he killing my family now?” Ramiro recalled saying.
Authorities said they arrived approximately 15 minutes later, after receiving multiple active shooter calls, and found four dead, including Sonia Guzmán. Her 9-year-old son, Daniel Enrique Laso Guzmán, was twisting in pain — but died in an ambulance on his way to the hospital.
What seemed to residents like a delayed police response brought back memories for Carlos Rivera, who said his family, which lives in another Cleveland neighborhood, has previously reported gunshots to no avail.
“We’ve told police we’re hearing bullets close by, that they’re near our home and we feel unsafe,” Rivera said in Spanish. “But all we’ve gotten told is ‘We can’t do anything about it because shooting a gun isn’t a crime’ or ‘If we can’t see the gun at the moment, we can’t respond.’”
On Wednesday, when asked about police’s response time, San Jacinto County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Tim Kean said a lone patrol unit was on an aggravated robbery case when dispatchers received the initial call from the house on April 28. After being notified that the incident had escalated, “they had to leave the aggravated robbery call, which is a serious call, so you got two bad things going on at once with one deputy to do it all,” he said.
“This is not a rich county, all right?” Kean said. “We’ve got three deputies on patrol to cover this entire county. If you’re going from north county to Trails End, it’s an hour drive with lights and sirens. We’ve got poor roads. We’re understaffed. Welcome to rural law enforcement — this is the way most of this nation is right now.”
Those circumstances, he added, made responding to reports of gunfire in a community where guns are a fixture even more challenging.
“Every single night they’re out there [shooting guns],” Kean said. “When they make the call, if a neighbor calls, by the time we get there, they know how long it takes. The guns are put up, everybody’s in the house and now we see no violation. When you don’t see anything in your presence as a policeman you can’t just go in there and kick somebody’s door down.”
The sheriff’s office did not respond to The Post’s questions about 911 operators telling family members officials were on-site. They have acknowledged several calls about an active shooter came through that evening.
‘Like walking on eggshells’
Ever since he moved to Texas in 2004, Rivera has operated under the assumption that anyone could be armed at any given moment. It’s something that weighs heavily in his mind as he raises a 13-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son.
“Listen, I’m from El Salvador, which isn’t exactly the safest country in the world,” said Rivera, who lives in Cleveland. “But even then, I never felt this paralyzing fear that someone could shoot up my children’s school, or the supermarket we go to, or, I guess now, our home if a neighbor is unhappy.”
Rivera said he finds himself checking for the clearest exits after entering any room. He prays often that his kids make it back safely from school. And he refrains from any possible situation that could lead to conflict — like asking a neighbor to lower the sound of music. Friday’s shooting exacerbated those fears.
“It’s like walking on eggshells every day,” Rivera said. “It’s horrible, but the first thing that popped in my mind after I heard the news was ‘Why do you approach a neighbor at night, especially if you know he has a gun?’ when the real question should have been ‘Why would you ever kill people this way?’”
“The fact that I asked myself that is jarring,” he added, tearing up. “How have we gotten to the point that those are our first questions?”
Allison Anderman, senior counsel and director of local policy at Giffords Law Center, an advocacy and research organization promoting gun control, said the answer to that question came down to how unrestrictive gun laws have become in Texas.
In Texas, permitless carry — in which people can carry a handgun in public without a permit, background check or safety training — and the state’s expansive stand-your-ground law have combined to create an environment that is ripe for violence, she said. The state’s self-defense law allows people to shoot others even if they could have left the conflict without jeopardizing their own safety. And Texas also has a defensive property law that allows for the use of deadly force against a fleeing person in order to recover stolen property.
“This turns the American justice system on its head because when you commit a crime, you are entitled under our Constitution to due process under the law and trial,” Anderman said. “But Texas allows you to execute someone even if you think that they have stolen your property.”
Texas enacted permitless carry in 2021, joining 25 other states. The state has never required, in modern times at least, a permit or training to carry a long gun like an AR-15 — the best-selling rifle in the country and the style of weapon that was used in last week’s shooting.
Under Texas law, recklessly shooting a gun in the direction of people or occupied homes, as well as engaging in conduct that could physically endanger people, are misdemeanors, Anderman said. There’s also a law that makes it illegal to discharge a gun in cities that have populations of 100,000 or more — leaving more rural areas like Cleveland comparatively unprotected, she added.
Gun advocates say weapons aren’t the root cause of the problem.
“It’s a tragedy, but we need to get away from blaming guns, which only answers the question of how and start asking the question why these shootings take place, why people feel the need to settle difference with violence and murder,” C.J. Grisham, legal and policy director for Texas Gun Rights, a Second Amendment advocacy group, told The Post after the shooting.
The recent spate of gun violence in Texas — including last year’s mass killing in Uvalde, among the deadliest in an American school — has left residents on edge. While victims’ families and gun control advocates have long clamored for measures they say could prevent another deadly shooting, none has yet passed. Instead, leaders in the Republican-controlled state have responded by expanding access to weapons — for instance, establishing a plan aimed at hardening school security that encourages staff members to carry guns. Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has advocated for fewer gun restrictions and called unconstitutional the measures for which victims’ families have lobbied.
“Texans shouldn’t have to live in fear that a neighbor with an AR-style weapon will come after their family. Congress needs to pass serious gun safety reform & the TX legislature has to stop putting folks at risk by loosening gun laws,” Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.) wrote on Twitter after news broke of the Cleveland shooting.
Some in Cleveland agreed with that assessment. Some defended the area’s gun culture and said the five recent deaths had not changed their minds.
“This shooting, if anything, reinforces that we need to have guns to protect ourselves,” said John Mitchell, a resident. As he stood outside a Walmart, Mitchell said he constantly worries about safety — plus, he added, “guns are a way of life in this part of town.”
“My granddaddy had a gun. My dad had a gun. I have a gun — mostly for hunting. But nowadays, with all those shots you hear around, you best be ready in case something happens,” he said, echoing the sentiments raised by other gun owners across the nation.
Still, for others, the line between protection and violence remains murky.
“Your heart knows not to race so much when you hear it,” Juanis Renovato, a Cleveland resident, said of the ever-present sound of gunshots. “Those are mostly men trying to show off their power, and we’re used to it. But should we even feel so comfortable with it?”
“At what point is something that’s supposed to be there for protection or hunting just a solution looking for a problem?” she added.
Emily Wax-Thibodeaux, Andrea Salcedo and Justine McDaniel in Washington and Molly Hennessy-Fiske in Houston contributed to this report.