Aviolent fugitive is suspected of murdering a family of five in their weekend cabin in Texas before being killed by law enforcement officers late Thursday, according to authorities.
Gonzalo Lopez, 46, had been on the run for weeks by the time police caught up with him in a county outside San Antonio. Lopez was wanted as a fugitive after escaping from police custody and after receiving a life sentence for murder years earlier, the Independent reports.
On May 12, Lopez staged an escape from a prison bus that was moving him from a facility in Gainesville to a different one for medical treatment, the Associated Press reports.
According to authorities, Lopez managed to free himself from his restraints on the prison bus and then cut through the expanded metal of the cage and crawl out through the bottom. The convict next assaulted the bus driver, stabbing him, before a second police officer attempted to intervene.
After stealing the prison bus, an officer fired at Lopez, disabling the vehicle and prompting him to flee into nearby woods. He had remained at large since the escape and was subject to an intensive manhunt that included a $50,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.
Lopez is thought to have been hiding in the vicinity of the weekend cabin owned by a Houston-area family near Centerville, Texas.
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Officers arrived at the property after a concerned relative expressed worry about the family. When they arrived, police discovered the bodies of one adult and four children in the cabin. Police have yet to release the name of the family.
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Police noticed that the family’s white pick-up truck had been missing from the scene. It was soon located in Atascosa County, about 220 miles southwest of the cabin.
The vehicle was stopped with spike traps when Lopez opened fire on police with an AR-15 assault rifle and a pistol. Ultimately, the fugitive was killed in the ensuing shootout with police, CNN reported.
Lopez was a former member of the Mexican Mafia prison gang and had ties to South Texas, according to Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason Clark. He was previously handed a life sentence in 2006 for the murder of a man along the Texas-Mexico border and was listed as among Texas’ 10 Most Wanted Fugitives after his escape.
