Law enforcement in Colorado confirmed the identity of the alleged gunman who shot six people during a birthday party on Sunday, as well as a potential motive, saying the suspect was angry he was not invited.
The Colorado Springs Police Department identified the suspect during a Tuesday press conference as 28-year-old Teodoro Macias, who was the boyfriend of Sandra Ibarra-Perez. After midnight on Sunday, Macias arrived at the residence and entered, where he shot all of the victims. He then killed himself inside the home.
Police named the victims as 30-year-old Melvin Perez and his wife, Mayra Ibarra De Perez, 33. Perez’s mother, 52-year-old Joana Cruz, and his younger brother, 21-year-old Jose Gutierrez, were also killed, as were Mayra’s siblings, Sandra Ibarra-Perez, 28, and Jose Ibarra. 26.
SEVEN PEOPLE DEAD AFTER SHOOTING AT COLORADO BIRTHDAY PARTY
There were three children inside the residence during the shooting and “to some degree witnessed what happened,” Lt. Joe Frabbiele said during the press conference. The children were left unharmed.
Macias, who did not have a criminal history, had been dating Ibarra-Perez for about one year and reportedly had a history of controlling and jealous behavior wherein he tried to isolate her from her family, according to Frabbiele.
“The suspect was not invited to the family gathering, and evidence supports that he became upset over that lack of an invitation,” Frabbiele said.
All of the victims were named previously in a local news report published on Monday, which interviewed two surviving family members, including Cruz’s daughter, Nubia Marquez. The party was being held in celebration of her birthday, as well as her mother’s and her brother Melvin’s.
“My mom had always liked celebrating them together,” Nubia Marquez said of the birthdays, according to the Gazette. She said she and her husband, Freddy, left the party around 10 p.m.
“It’s a stark reminder of how lethal domestic violence incidents can be,” Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers said on Tuesday.
The shooting follows another mass shooting in the Colorado city of Boulder, where 10 people were killed at a King Soopers supermarket on March 22.
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“In Colorado, we’ve had domestic terrorism incidents where lots of people were killed, we’ve had random acts like going into a King Soopers or a movie theater, but let’s not forget about the lethality of domestic violence,” Suthers said.
