Nearby residents disappointed TDCJ officials said nothing about escaped inmate being in search area
CENTERVILLE, Texas - "Cop cars everywhere, lights, dogs, horses, I mean it was like a movie," said Robert Matthews, a Centerville resident who lives in the search area where officials were looking for escaped killer inmate Gonzalo Lopez.
After Lopez escaped on May 12, many residents like Matthews spent days on lockdown.
"It was a nightmare," said search area resident Karen Moore. "You never expect when you live in a peace and quiet place, all of a sudden you have to be on lockdown."
"All of the stress, and all of the sleepless nights we went through and the anxiety," said search area resident Melanie Tieperman.
"We had to start locking all the doors. Like everybody else, when you come back in your house, you've got to clear it when you walk in to be sure nobody is in the house," said Mark Nix, who lives near the search area.
After about nine days of searching, residents say TDCJ employees led them to believe Lopez was long gone.
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"TDCJ agents they told us pretty much that they had a good lead that he was down in south Texas, and so everybody goes back to their normal life," Matthews said.
In a statement, TDCJ said on May 31, four days before Lopez shot and killed five members of the Collins family, and was later gunned down by police, a cabin near the Collins home was broken into.
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Instead of alerting residents in the search area, the state agency waited for evidence to be processed. That happened on June 2. The murders had already taken place.
"That's what we were getting in the beginning, we were getting alerts about him being in the area," said Matthews.
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But residents say they got no alert about the May 31 discovery that Lopez was possibly hiding out near the Collins property.
"You feel angry. You feel kind of betrayed by TDCJ somewhat, because it seems like they just hid everything we could have known as far as him probably being in the area, and we didn't get anything," Matthews said.
"They should have alerted everyone in the search area, so we could have at least known to lock our doors back," Moore said.
"They should have told everybody. Anytime they had a sighting, they should have told everybody," Nix said.
"Heartbroken for the family," said Moore. "But angry that it could have been prevented."
Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has called for the Texas Rangers to investigate how Lopez escaped, and why residents in the search area were not notified about Lopez possibly being in the area four days before the murders.