A cellphone video captured the second Texas inmate Gonzalo Lopez crashed a jail switch bus and fled into the woods, sparking an intense three-week manhunt that got here to a bloody finish Thursday when the escapee was shot useless by cops.
Lopez, 46, who had been on the lam since hijacking the jail bus Could 12, was cornered in Jourdanton, Texas, and killed in a police shootout at round 10:30 p.m.
Officers gunned down the wished fugitive simply hours after he allegedly murdered a grandfather and his 4 grandchildren — then stole a pickup truck to hold on together with his escape.
Lopez, a convicted assassin serving two life sentences, was being taken to a medical appointment on board a jail bus with 16 different inmates when he by some means managed to free himself from restraints, took management of the bus, crashed it after which fled on foot.
Melanie Tieperman was driving along with her son in Leon County, Texas, when she stumbled on the crash scene. A cellphone recording that the girl shared with KAGS-TV seems to indicate Lopez working into the close by woods.
“Yo, we noticed the inmate! What the heck?” Tieperman’s son, Braxton, exclaims, as a small determine is seen lurking among the many timber within the distance.
The boy later observes Lopez working in direction of a close-by home.
“Whoever is in that home would possibly wish to watch out,” he remarks.
Robert Hurst, a spokesperson for the Texas Division of Felony Justice, had mentioned Lopez had a historical past of escaping custody.
“He’s artful,” Hurst advised CBS Information. “He’s performed this earlier than down in South Texas in Webb County. He hid out for nearly 9 days.”
Hurst was unable to share any further details about Lopez’s earlier escape and referred The Publish’s inquiries to authorities in Webb County, the place nobody was instantly out there to remark Friday morning.
Earlier than Lopez’s killing, he had been named the prime suspect within the murders of an grownup and 4 kids inside a weekend cabin in Centerville, about 250 miles from the place police in the end discovered him.
Officers haven't but recognized the victims, however the 4 kids had been college students within the Tomball college district, about 33 miles northwest of Houston. The Tomball Impartial Faculty District confirmed the scholars and their grandfather had been killed in a message to the group on Friday.
The household had arrived on Thursday morning in rural Centerville, an hour and a half drive from Tomball, authorities mentioned.
Jason Clark, spokesman for the Texas Division of Felony Justice, mentioned it's believed the household was killed simply hours after they arrived.
The our bodies had been found round 6 p.m. by officers performing a welfare examine on the request of a involved relative.
The slain victims had no ties to Lopez, who was a former member of the Mexican Mafia jail gang, in accordance with authorities.
After greater than three weeks on the free, Lopez ran out of luck when cops noticed him driving a white Chevrolet Silverado that had been stolen from the quintuple homicide scene.
Deputies in Atascosa County tracked down the pickup truck and disabled it with spike strips, inflicting it to crash right into a tree.
Lopez emerged from the wrecked car and opened hearth at pursuing officers, who returned hearth, killing the fugitive, mentioned Clark. The 46-year-old had in his possession a handgun and a rifle.
On Could 12, Lopez was being transported from the Alfred Hughes Unit close to Gatesville to a jail medical facility in Huntsville in a caged space of the jail bus when he broke free from his restraints, minimize by way of the expanded steel of the cage and crawled from the underside.
He then stabbed the motive force, who stopped the bus and obtained into an altercation with Lopez, they usually each ultimately obtained off the bus.
A second officer on the rear of the bus exited and approached Lopez, who obtained again on the bus and began driving down the street, the division mentioned.
The officers fired at Lopez and disabled the bus by taking pictures the rear tire, the division mentioned. The bus then traveled a brief distance earlier than leaving the roadway, the place Lopez obtained out and fled into the woods.
Lopez was serving back-to-back life sentences for taking pictures a Webb County sheriff’s deputy throughout a site visitors cease in 2004, and slaughtering a person with a pickax in Hidalgo County after holding him for a $40,000 ransom on a drug debt in 2005.
Had he lived, Lopez would have been up for parole for the primary time solely in April 2045.
With Publish wires
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