This is the moment Francisco Oropeza was led away in handcuffs,
ending a nationwide manhunt.
Authorities say a call to an FBI tip line led them to a home in the nearby
town of Cut and Shoot, Texas.
The US Marshals, FBI, we had a tag team.
They all meandered over there and found that tip to be true.
He was caught hiding in a closet underneath some laundry.
They effectively made the arrest.
He is uninjured.
Bottom line is, we now have this man in custody.
>> That's right.
Francisco Oropeza, the 38 year old man who shot and killed five people,
five of his neighbors last week on Friday night, after they had asked
him to stop shooting his weapon in his yard, was finally captured.
Now, as many as 200 law enforcement officials,
law enforcement members engaged in the manhunt, and they finally captured
him four days after the shooting due to a lead that was given to the FBI.
Now, before we get to more details about his capture, I think it's really important
to remember who the victims were, and you should see who they are.
We should say their names.
You have Diana Velasquez, Alvarado, 21 years old,
Daniel Enrique Laso, Guzman, Just nine years old,
Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25 years old, Julisa Molina Rivera Rivera,
31 years old, and Jose Jonathan Cesarez, 18 years old.
All of those individuals died.
There were two children who were found covered in blood, but
they luckily weren't injured.
And the reason why they weren't injured is because women
were found on top of them, shot to death.
They were protecting the kids by serving as human shields.
So I am very happy that this guy got caught.
We have more details about him in just a moment.
But John, thoughts.
>> Yeah, that was the detail that got me that I think got a lot
of people in the same way.
That shootings are becoming so normalized that it's like,
did you know that there was another mass shooting in Atlanta today?
Just it's gonna be a different city.
It's gonna be every day.
Even the very specific details start to ring a bell when you hear them.
People being forced to use their bodies as the last line of defense against these
weapons.
In many cases, women specifically.
Whether it's their kids, whether it's students.
Since all of the people with the power to stop these shootings from happening
have decided not to, they themselves have to use their bodies because that's
the only defense left to them.
And so incredibly brave.
I'm glad that they were able to track this guy down.
Thankfully, the tip came in.
God only knows if it hadn't >> Right.
>> I mean, Texas is a big state.
You could go pretty much anywhere even with hundreds of people searching.
That's not even really a criticism of law enforcement,
it's difficult to find someone in this country.
It's very large.
But I'm glad that they did,
that they found him fast before he was able to kill anyone else.
And I know you're gonna get to another person being charged.
That's the part where I start to, he did this killing,
he should go to jail the rest of his life.
That's it.
He was tracked down, but now when you bring in the extra person,
that's when I have thoughts.
>> Right, I mean, it really depends.
So, the other person is his significant other, allegedly.
And the authorities are alleging that she was helping to hide him.
You can't do that, right?
So it depends.
I mean, if they could prove that in court, then there are consequences to that.
But I do agree with you.
The main focus here is the person who slaughtered five innocent people in their
homes, and they had asked him to stop shooting his gun in his yard because there
was a baby sleeping in the house.
And apparently that infuriated him so much that he decided to kill people.
It's just unbelievable.
Now the accused shooter, Francisco Oropeza,
is a 38 year old Mexican national.
He's being held on five counts of murder, with bonds set at $5 million,
according to the Sheriff's office.
He is expected to appear in court Wednesday to be read the charges,
meaning today, which could be upgraded to capital murder,
a death penalty offense in Texas,
a source with the San Jacinto County District Attorney's Office told CNN.
And as we had shared with you earlier when we first shared the story,
he has been deported four times since 2009.
And he was spotted on foot Monday of this week,
causing several elementary schools to be locked down.
But officials ended up losing track of him.
The sheriff's deputy, Tim Keane, shared that with the press.
Authorities are unsure exactly when Oropeza arrived at the house where
he was found.
Later, when the authorities found him,
he was apparently hiding in a closet underneath a pile of clothing.
>> So not as big and
tough as when he was shooting his assault rifle in his front yard.
>> Exactly.
>> Look, I think we try to ground everything that we say with empathy,
compassion.
It's sort of core to being on the side of the spectrum that we are, but
there's some people that I can try but
it'd be like trying to put my mind into the mind of an aliens or something.
Why you'd make the choices that you did,
how you thought any of this would benefit you, I can't understand it.
It's an alien experience.
>> He was so close to the murder scene too.
He was found just ten miles away.
>> They're probably terrified to run farther,
thinking that he could be spotted or videotaped or something like that.
So they're gonna have their charges, they're gonna try to update it or
upgrade it to murder or to death penalty.
If you ask them why, they'll say to disincentivize people doing this.
Which makes no sense because they kill people all the time, and
that didn't stop him from doing it.
It doesn't seem to stop any of these mass shooters, actually.
And not the death penalty, not years of legal back and forth and
appeals that results in your death.
The fact that many of these mass shooters are gunned down on the scene or
shoot themselves, none of that seemed to stop them from doing it.
So at some point, perhaps,
rational people can decide that that's not the incentive that they think it is.
>> I mean, the shootings ,obviously,
they're happening more often, more regularly.
But the cause of the shooting, right?
Or what sparks the shooting, >> It's becoming pettier and more casual.
>> 100%.
Thank you for saying that.
Thank you for articulating it in a way that I couldn't,
because you're absolutely right about that.
The story about the cheerleaders who accidentally tried to get into the wrong
car, they get shot.
I mean, the stories are endless.
And we haven't even covered every single one of them, because we would literally
have to dedicate every minute of this show, every single day.
>> It'd be a whole show.
>> It would be the entire show.
And I apologize to you guys.
I know there was another shooting today in Atlanta.
But it's just so hard to cover every single one of these
shootings that make the news, because it puts you in this state
of overwhelming despair and sadness, and hopelessness.
You get what I'm saying?
And I don't know how to cope with that anymore.
>> If it makes you feel better, it's not going to.
In the same way that we can't ever possibly cover all of the horrific,
even mass shootings, we also can't cover all of the worst
instances of police brutality, the worst environmental disasters,
the worst systemic failures of our health care system.
We can't cover all of anything.
So, don't stress yourself out needlessly.
We're gonna constantly fail
because the country is broken in a thousand different ways.
>> It is, 100%.
And at the same time, I don't want you guys to lose your mind.
So every once in a while,
we have some lighter stories in the second hour because we need a break.
>> Yeah, and so if we get to some of those, and
there is something that you think we missed,
understand that we didn't necessarily miss it, we just don't want to lose our minds.
>> Right.
And there is a possibility we might have missed it.
So, I never mind when you guys send me stories.
>> I cover pretty much everything in my mind.
>> [LAUGH] >> But anyway, I also wanna say, and
I understand for those of you who watch these shows all the time,
this is going to totally be needless.
But the other side of, how could you possibly think that
an active death penalty is gonna stop this when it never has ever?
Is like the people who think that what we need is to set up a system of consequences
so that a potential guy who's gonna do something like this gentleman did, is that
he's then going to go through a flowchart of all of the likely consequences.
As if anything that was going on was rational or logical.
What are we supposed to believe?
That this guy, prior to walking over and beginning to hunt down each individual
member of this family, thought, this is the beginning of great things for me.
It's all up from here.
No, he probably assumed, best case scenario, locked up, probably killed.
Either by himself or by the cops.
So all of that is nonsense, all of that incentive stuff.
The only important thing here is not long term consequences from a death penalty,
it's that he had the gun.
>> Yeah, I actually- >> If he didn't have the gun,
the shooting wouldn't have happened.
With the cheerleaders, if he didn't have the gun,
the shooting wouldn't have happened.
That's the only factor that mattered was the presence of the gun,
that's what made people unsafe.
>> In fact, I wanna read a comment from our member, Sharon Reedy, who says,
it is the number of weapons, it is the convenience.
Most of all, it's the social attitude.
They're the cool toys cool people have.
He was drunk, playing with a gun.
And that's exactly right.
>> Yeah.
>> Look, in order to purchase a handgun for self defense,
which I keep safely in my home, I stopped smoking pot.
I don't consume it anymore.
And it's because I take that seriously.
If you are consuming it, you are not supposed to be able to buy one.
You don't pass a background check, right?
I don't wanna lie on the forms, so I'm gonna tell the truth.
It's a serious thing.
It is a lethal weapon and it should be treated as such.
Yes, we have a right to bear arms.
They always leave out the second half of that constitutional right,
which is, in a well regulated militia.
But whatever.
It is a serious thing to have, it is a serious lethal weapon to have,
and it should be taken seriously.
Not treated as if it's just a casual toy,
that you should show off in your Christmas cards, or
you should have laying around in your home.
There's something about this normalization of casually
messing around with these weapons.
It's like driving me crazy, because- >> I agree.
>> It's in everyone's minds and they think, yeah, of course,
why wouldn't I shoot my gun in my yard?