A convicted murderer serving a existence penitentiary sentence in Texas stabbed a transport bus driver and escaped Thursday, setting off a frantic manhunt that modified into ongoing bigger than a day later.
The getaway took salvage as officers bussed Gonzalo Lopez, 46, and other inmates thru a rural predicament between Houston and Dallas about 1.20pm. Lopez by some skill slipped out of his shackles, venerable an unspecified engrossing object to stab the driver in the hand and lunged for the wounded officer’s service pistol, Robert Hurst of the Texas department of criminal justice suggested newshounds.
The driving force blocked Lopez from taking the gun nonetheless couldn’t end him from leaping out of the bus, Hurst said. A second guard aboard the bus fired each a pistol and a shotgun at Lopez, nonetheless it absolutely wasn’t sure whether any of the blasts hit the prisoner, who modified into final viewed fleeing across a shut-by cow pasture.
Fifteen other prisoners on the bus did no longer strive to assemble a rush for it, Hurst added. Hurst furthermore said the wounded guard’s stabbing is no longer thought of existence-threatening.
An undated photo equipped by the Texas department of criminal justice of Gonzalo Lopez. Photo: APLopez remained at expansive on Friday afternoon, bigger than a day later, and authorities had been publicly offering $15,000 for files main to his take.
Greater than 300 regulations enforcement officers from local, relate and federal companies had been scouring the predicament across the neighborhood of Centerville for signs of Lopez, who investigators suspect could maybe also very smartly be hiding in any of the creek beds or brush patches in the dry, hot predicament, primarily based totally on Hurst. An airplane crew modified into aiding search efforts.
Lopez modified into ordered to serve the the relaxation of his existence in penitentiary after he shot at a sheriff’s place of job deputy in 2004 and killed a person with a pickaxe after retaining him for ransom over a drug deal long gone awry come Texas’ border with Mexico, primarily based totally on officials. He modified into most no longer too long ago being housed at a corrections facility in Gatesville, bigger than 100 miles from the salvage the hunt for Lopez modified into centered.
“I can’t reiterate ample how abominable this man is,” Hurst suggested media gathered come the hunt perimeter Friday.
Lopez’s atomize out drew comparisons from some to a 2019 case furthermore in Texas wherein a blended martial arts fighter accused of killing two folk fled from an inmate transport van.
Authorities said they at final captured that escaper, Cedric “Spiderman” Marks, nine hours later as he unsuccessfully tried to veil in a trash can.