An extensive search for a Texas man charged with killing five neighbors has landed two others in custody, authorities said Wednesday, while hinting that they were investigating more people who may have helped the alleged shooter evade police.
Oropesa’s partner, Divimara Lamar Nava, was arrested after authorities found Oropesa on Tuesday evening at a home about 20 miles from where the shooting occurred. She has been charged with hindering his apprehension. The two were a couple, according to authorities, though jail records showed they were not legally married.
“Ms. Nava appeared to be cooperating up until the time we arrested her,” San Jacinto County District Attorney Todd Dillon said at a Wednesday afternoon news conference. “She was providing him with material aid and encouragement, and it appears that she arranged transport to this house. I don’t know if she physically took Mr. Oropesa to this house, but she was part of that arrangement.”
Another person who may have helped Oropesa was taken into custody on a marijuana-related charge and is considered a person of interest in the shooting investigation, San Jacinto County First Assistant District Attorney Rob Freyer told The Washington Post.
The search for Oropesa after the shooting near Cleveland, Tex., stretched from late Friday to Tuesday evening, as the FBI and several other agencies canvassed a largely wooded section of the rural region and fielded an outpouring of tips. Authorities lost track of Oropesa at least twice; the FBI initially identified the wrong man as the suspect; and the victims’ family alleged that deputies were slow to respond to multiple 911 calls before and during the shooting.
Oropesa was eventually found hiding under a pile of laundry in a home in Cut and Shoot, Tex., authorities said. He is charged with five counts of first-degree murder, and he is being held at San Jacinto County Jail. A judge on Wednesday set his bail at $7.5 million. Nava was arraigned at a local court in Montgomery County on Wednesday, where prosecutors detailed how she allegedly aided Oropesa.
Oropesa, prosecutors said, had arrived at the house Nava was already present in at 1:15 a.m. on Tuesday, less than 20 hours before Oropesa’s arrest. He showered and slept there, prosecutors said. Nava left the house to buy him doughnuts and at some point delivered a message to Oropesa’s cousin that he was seeking assistance to get to Mexico, prosecutors said. The cousin told Nava that they would not help him, prosecutors added.
On Tuesday night, authorities, acting on a tip from an anonymous caller, arrived at Nava’s home, and she granted them permission to search the residence, finally ending a four-day manhunt, according to prosecutors.
Freyer said that the case met Texas’s threshold for capital murder and that the district attorney’s office would “explore that possibility going forward.”
Authorities said the fatal rampage began Friday about 11 p.m., after Oropesa’s neighbors asked him not to shoot his weapon close to their adjoining front yard while a baby in their home was trying to sleep. Rather than stop, authorities said, Oropesa entered the neighbors’ house and shot some of the family members in the head.
Those killed were Sonia Argentina Guzmán, 25; Diana Velazquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31; Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18; and Daniel Enrique Laso, 9.
Authorities thought they were closing in on Oropesa more than once before Tuesday, but he evaded them each time. Officials said they were tracking him Saturday, but an FBI agent said the next day that the search was hitting “dead ends.” Oropesa was spotted on foot Monday, prompting lockdowns at several elementary schools but law enforcement again lost track of him, said Tim Kean, chief deputy for the San Jacinto County Sheriff’s Office..
U.S. marshals, the U.S. Border Patrol’s tactical unit and the Texas Department of Public Safety arrested Oropesa about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, about an hour after an anonymous caller sent a tip to an FBI hotline. Oropesa was unarmed and had a cellphone that he had used to contact people while on the run, officials said. Freyer said other people were at the home where he was found.
“We don’t know his path between the time that he fled the scene and the time he was picked up yesterday afternoon,” Freyer said Wednesday.
Kean said those arrested had offered little insight.
“Anybody that helped this maniac has definitely got some kind of issues, as far as I’m concerned,” he said.
Early Wednesday, Kean said no more than five people had been arrested in connection with the case, declining to give reporters an exact number. Late in the afternoon, Freyer said Oropesa’s partner and friend were the only people linked to Oropesa in custody, “for now.”
Texas DPS arrested Nava, Oropesa’s partner, at a home in Conroe, Tex. — just west of Cut and Shoot — and booked her into jail in Montgomery County, Tex., early Wednesday, jail records show. Her hindering apprehension charge is a third-degree felony that can carry two to 10 years in prison.
Nava, 52, sought a protective order against Oropesa last year, alleging domestic abuse. Prosecutors filed charges against him in response, San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers told reporters Tuesday, but authorities trying to serve him with an arrest warrant couldn’t find him after he left the county. A few days later, the alleged victim filed paperwork indicating a desire not to have the case prosecuted, Capers said.
On Wednesday, Kean addressed claims by the shooting victims’ family that they called 911 multiple times, including before the killings began, and before officers arrived. The county has only three deputies on patrol for an area that can take an hour to traverse, Kean said. One deputy was responding to a report of an aggravated robbery when the first call came in about Oropesa firing his gun in the yard — a lesser concern than the robbery, Kean said.
“Then that other call escalated,” he said.
The sheriff has also said Oropesa was known to shoot in his yard. People in the area frequently fire guns aimlessly outside their homes, and Kean said it can be difficult to police because they have often put away their guns and gone inside by the time law enforcement arrives.
Carrying firearms is common in Texas, which has a stand-your-ground law. Oropesa, whom Immigration and Customs Enforcement said had previously been deported from the United States four times, would not have been legally allowed to own a gun because he is an undocumented immigrant.
Authorities recovered five guns from Oropesa’s house that were initially purchased by other people, according to law enforcement officials. At least one of those weapons was purchased as recently as five years ago; others were much older.
Mark Berman, Monika Mathur, Maria Sachetti, Perry Stein and Emily Wax-Thibodeaux contributed to this report.