According to family relatives, the 9-year-old victim of the tragic Texas shooting died “defending his mother” and was friends with the shooting suspect’s son. Wilson Garcia, a survivor, told NBC News that on Friday night after his mother was shot and killed at the family’s house in rural Cleveland, Texas, his small son, Daniel Enrique Laso, ran to his mother.
“My son died because he wanted to protect his mother, because seeing her fallen, he took off running to where she was. And he [the suspect] had no compassion, to see a boy crying for his mother. My son, he died because he was defending his mother. When he saw her on the floor, he ran towards her, and that man had no compassion. A kid crying for his mom,” Garcia said as per Insider.
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Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25, and Garcia’s son were two of the five people killed in the “almost execution-style” shooting, according to the police.
Garcia begged his neighbor, the shooting suspect, to stop firing an AR-15-style gun near Garcia’s family house since his newborn baby was attempting to go asleep. This is when the shooting started.
“He told us he was on his property, and he could do whatever he wanted,” Garcia said following a vigil on Sunday.
Garcia’s boy was friends with the suspect’s child, according to his uncle, who survived the shooting by hiding in a closet with his wife and child. Ramiro Guzman claimed that his nephew “always took his bicycle to where the school bus would stop” and that “sometimes” the two of them “went together.”
“They rode their bicycles together all the time. They were similar to friends. The culprit, Francisco Oropesa Perez-Torres, 38, who is still at large and wanted by law enforcement, killed the victim, according to Guzman. Guzman referred to Daniel as “a great kid” and that he was to him like a second son. Garcia said in the past that his family contacted 911 five times just before the shooting began.
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However, the shooter had left the scene by the time authorities arrived. When Guzman contacted 911, the dispatcher would always tell him that deputies were already on the site, but they weren’t. Guzman described this to NBC News.
