Teen arrested in East Texas mass shooting that left four family members dead

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

Nash police officers responded a little before 11 a.m. to the 500 block of Lemon Acres in reference to an unknown issue, the department said in a news release. Witnesses told officers that a person was armed and barricaded inside a home.

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

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

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

According to The Associated Press, an arrest-warrant affidavit says Olalde called police after officers responded to the home, saying he had pulled the trigger and shot his family. When officers persuaded Olalde to surrender, they found the bodies of his parents, Reuben Olalde and Aida Garcia, older sister Lisbet Olalde and younger brother Oliver Olalde in a bathroom.

The affidavit said, “it appeared as if the victims had been shot at various places in the residence and drug to the bathroom.” It added a coworker of Lisbet Olalde went to the home because she had failed to arrive at work.

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

The mass killing in Nash, a city with a little over 3,000 people about 170 miles east from Dallas, is the 25th so far in 2023, according to a database maintained by the 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 rifle and fatally shot five of his neighbors.

Olalde remained in custody as of Thursday evening with his bond set at $10 million, jail records show. His attorney could not immediately be reached for a request for comment.