BORDER HORROR: Grandfather And His 4 Grandchildren Murdered By Escaped Cartel Gang Member In Houston

A Houston-area grandfather and his four grandsons walked into a fatal ambush Thursday at the hands of a convicted murderer who escaped from a prison bus three weeks earlier and had broken into the family’s weekend getaway home in Centerville, leaving friends and relatives “beyond devastated.”

Police, alerted by a relative that had not heard from the grandfather, discovered the five bodies around 6 p.m. Immediately suspecting Lopez and with details of a pickup missing from the residence — and possibly missing firearms — police sent out a statewide alert for the 1999 Chevy Silverado.

Identifying the truck and warning that Lopez had ties to San Antonio and the Rio Grade Valley is what allowed police to eventually close in. An investigator and deputy sheriff from Atascosa County, south of San Antonio, spotted the truck on Texas 16 a few miles north of Poteet and matched the license plate to the Leon County alert, said Atascosa County Sheriff David Soward.

The Jourdanton Police Chief laid spike strips across the highway, which Lopez drove over, puncturing all of the truck’s tires, Soward said. From there, Soward said Lopez tried to flee but numerous police had begun a dogged pursuit that at one point led Lopez to cut through a field and then back onto Texas 16.

As he entered the city limits of Jourdanton, Soward said Lopez “stuck a semi-automatic rifle out the truck’s window and fired shots at pursuing officers, before he drove into a utility pole, lost control and plowed through a chain link fence.