On Sunday afternoon, a woman named Julie was sitting on the porch of her house, next door to the one searched the day before. She declined to give her last name to an AP reporter but said she awoke from a nap around 6 p.m. Saturday to see four police squad cars and a large group of officers outside her neighbor’s home.
She said they entered the home and were joined about an hour later by FBI agents and other people wearing plainclothes, who she also took to be law enforcement.
The woman said she did not know her neighbors well, but knew them to be “very polite, very nice people.” She said the man she now understands to have been the shooter was always friendly and would wave or honk his horn as he came and went.
At about 2 p.m. Sunday, a man entered the home that was searched, but when reporters knocked on the door and waited, no one answered.
People gather across the street from a shopping center after a shooting Saturday, May 6, 2023, in Allen, Texas. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
ASSOCIATED PRESS
In a statement, President Joe Biden said the assailant wore tactical gear and fired an AR-15-style weapon. He urged Congress to enact tighter restrictions on firearms and ammunition.
“Such an attack is too shocking to be so familiar. And yet, American communities have suffered roughly 200 mass shootings already this year, according to leading counts,” said Biden, who ordered flags lowered to half-staff.
Republicans in Congress, he said, “cannot continue to meet this epidemic with a shrug.”
The shooting was the latest attack to contribute to the unprecedented pace of mass killings this year in the U.S. Barely a week before, five people were fatally shot in Cleveland, Texas, after a neighbor asked a man to stop firing his weapon while a baby slept, authorities said.
This year has seen an average of about one mass killing per week, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University.
Information about the gunman in Allen emerged as the community mourned the dead and awaited word on the seven people who were wounded. Authorities have not publicly identified those who were killed.
The wounded remained hospitalized Sunday, three in critical condition and four in fair condition, the Allen Police Department said in a statement.