Officials in Central Texas said late Thursday that an escaped inmate serving a life sentence for murder was dead.
The Leon County Sheriff’s Office, located about halfway between Dallas and Houston, announced about 10:30 p.m. that Gonzalo Lopez was “captured & deceased.”
Authorities had released additional information hours earlier about the search for Lopez, 46, who had been on the run since his escape from a prison bus last month.
In a series of tweets, the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said Lopez may have been driving a pickup that was missing from a cabin where authorities found five people dead.
The TDCJ initially said authorities responded to the cabin and found the bodies of two adults and three children, but it was later changed to one adult and four minors. Police responded after someone expressed concern about an elderly relative.
Their identities were not released, but authorities said the victims were a family from Houston.
Jason Clark, a TDCJ spokesman, said the home was a weekend cabin for the family in Centerville, Texas. The family was thought to have arrived at the cabin Thursday morning, which they owned, Clark said. They are believed to have been killed that afternoon and had no link to Lopez, he said.
Authorities don’t yet know whether Lopez had been staying in the cabin or if he ambushed them upon their arrival, Clark said.
Clark said that Atascosa County law enforcement officers spotted Lopez driving the white pickup truck Thursday. They followed him and spiked his tires, officials said.
After a short chase and a crash, Lopez got out of the truck with at least two firearms, TDCJ officials said. He fired several shots at the officers and officers returned fire, killing him. No officers were struck in the gunfire.
Lopez escaped from a prison transport bus May 12 after he overpowered the driver. None of the other 15 prisoners on board escaped.
Lopez was convicted of capital murder in Hidalgo County and sentenced to life in prison in 2006, records show. He was last incarcerated at a prison in Gatesville, about 130 miles west of Leon County.
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(Staff writer Nataly Keomoungkhoun contributed to this report.)
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