The 9-year-old Texas boy shot dead execution-style alongside four relatives was a buddy of the still-at-large suspect’s own child, according to an uncle.
Daniel Enrique Laso — who was gunned down while trying to protect his mom in the rampage — would each morning “take his bicycle to where the school bus would stop,” his uncle Ramiro Guzman, a survivor of Friday night’s massacre, told NBC News on Monday.
“Sometimes they went together, my nephew and his child,” Guzman said of suspect Francisco Oropesa, 38, whom the FBI agent in charge called a “monster.”
“They always went on their bicycles together,” he said of the neighbor’s child.
“They were like friends. And he killed him,” Guzman said.
Guzman described how he survived by hiding in a closet as their enraged neighbor Oropesa — also known as Oropeza — hunted for victims in the rural Houston-area home with an AR-15-style rifle.
He was able to protect his own wife and child, but emerged to see his mortally-wounded nephew, who was hit in the back and arm.
“He was writhing on the floor and I said, ‘Oh my God, he’s still alive,'” Guzman told NBC News of his nephew.
“My nephew, despite everything, I thought he would survive,” he said of the boy who was like a second son. “He was a great kid.”
Guzman also saw the slain body of his sister, Daniel’s mom Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25. The boy died while trying to protect her, according to his dad, another of those who survived.
“To see her the way I did, it’s unbelievable,” Guzman said of his sister.
“I still think maybe she’s going to call me, that I’m going to get to see her again and she’d be like always, strong and supporting us through everything,” he said.
“She was the best sister. She supported us through everything, absolutely everything.”
He said his sister has not seen their mom in Honduras for 10 years after moving her family to the US.
“Everyone comes here with a plan, with a goal,” Guzman told NBC.
“Now my mom is going to see my sister, but in the worst way. She’s going to see my nephew in the worst way.”
The mom and son were murdered alongside three others in the house in Cleveland, Texas: Julisa Molina Rivera, 31, Diana Velazquez Alvarado, 21, and Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18.
San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers earlier said that all five were shot from the neck up, “execution-style.”
Police recovered the AR-15-style rifle used by Oropesa, who remained at large Tuesday despite a massive manhunt and a combined $80,000 in rewards.
“We’re asking everyone for your help so we can bring this suspect — or this monster, I will call him — to justice,” said FBI Houston special agent in charge James Smith.
The suspect is a Mexican national who has been deported four times since 2009, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) confirmed. He was again apprehended and deported in September 2009, January 2012 and July 2016.
With Post wires