Teenager arrested in East Texas mass shooting that claimed the lives of four family members

An 18-year-old is in jail on capital murder charges in connection with a mass shooting at an East Texas home Tuesday that left four people dead.

Nash Police officers responded shortly before 11 a.m. at the 500 block of Lemon Acres in reference to an undisclosed issue, the department said in a news release. Witnesses told officers that one person was armed and barricaded inside a house.

Police said they also learned that more people had already been killed inside the house. A Bowie County Sheriff’s Department negotiator “established contact” with the barricaded person and negotiated the suspect’s surrender. Police identified him as Cesar Olalde.

Officers then entered the house and found four people dead. Police said he was incarcerated at the Bi-State prison in Texarkana on capital murder charges. Several agencies responded to assist the Nash police, including the Bowie County Sheriff, the Texas Rangers, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and the Texarkana Police Department.

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Bowie County court records show Olalde is facing two felony charges: capital murder of multiple people and capital murder of a person under the age of 10.

Second The Associated Press, an arrest warrant affidavit says Olalde called police after officers responded to the house, saying she pulled the trigger and shot her family. When the agents convinced Olalde to surrender, they found the bodies of his parents, Reuben Olalde and Aida Garcia, his older sister Lisbet Olalde and his younger brother Oliver Olalde in a bathroom.

The affidavit said, “the victims appeared to have been shot at various points in the residence and drugged in the bathroom.” He added that a colleague of Lisbet Olalde went home because she hadn’t arrived for work.

According to the AP, the affidavit said the colleague told police Olalde said he “killed his family because they were cannibals and would eat him.”

The mass killing in Nash, a city of just over 3,000 people about 170 miles east of Dallas, is the 25th so far as of 2023, according to a database maintained by AP and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University. It comes nearly a month after authorities say a man in Cleveland went next door with a shotgun and shot five of his neighbors to death.

Olalde remained in custody through Thursday night with his bail set at $10 million, prison records show. His attorney could not be reached immediately for a request for comment.

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