SAN ANTONIO – People who live in a Northeast Bexar County neighborhood where two people were found dead inside their home are still trying to make sense of the violence.
Sheriff’s deputies discovered the bodies just before 8 p.m. Tuesday.
A short time later, Sheriff Javier Salazar spoke to news crews, telling them the couple had been murdered.
He said deputies went to the home after receiving a call from police in Austin.
Salazar said his department was notified that a suspect in a series of deadly shootings in that city had ties to the local home, located in the 6400 block of Port Royal.
When deputies arrived, he said, they noticed water seeping out of the home, then forced their way inside.
“They began clearing the house and soon, thereafter, they began reporting that they found one body, then another,” Salazar said.
The couple, both believed to be in their 50s, were murdered by a man who then went to Austin and shot seven other people, killing four of them, he said.
The three survivors in Austin include two law enforcement officers, Salazar said.
“I don’t know why he did that. I don’t know. But, you know, you don’t have to kill anybody,” said Tyrone Powell, who lives across the street from the home where the East Bexar County victims were found. “It’s really sad. He was a good man. His wife was good too.”
Daniel Garcia had noticed the commotion on the normally quiet street as he left for work Tuesday night but didn’t think much of it.
“I saw that and then I was, kind of, like, ‘Hmm maybe somebody got pulled over or something like that,” Garcia said.
He said he was surprised to learn later what actually happened.
Investigators locally and in Austin are still working to learn more about what led to the violence.
Salazar announced that a suspect had been arrested in that city.
Although law enforcement officers have not released his identity, the Austin American-Statesmen had identified him as Shane James, 34.