VIDEO: Alleged shooter surrenders after SWAT team raids empty house

MERCEDES — The SWAT team watched the sun rise over the suspect’s house before making its move.

Team members had surveilled the house more than five hours by 8 a.m. Tuesday. Clad in body armor and toting rifles, the squad broke out a window and set off a flash grenade inside.

Then they knocked in the door at 1014 S. Garza Ave., looking for the shooter.

Their suspect, 28-year-old Oscar Garcia, was nowhere to be found.

“He must have panicked,” Adan Alonzo, a friend of Garcia, said at the scene Tuesday morning. “He should have stayed.”

Mercedes police were seeking Garcia in connection with the shooting of a neighbor outside his house shortly after 2 a.m. Tuesday. The fruitless search for the man at his house sent five nearby schools into lockdown as police combed the area.

Shortly after 1 p.m., a tip led detectives to their suspect, who was at a friend’s house on the 100 block of North Georgia Avenue, said Mercedes police Capt. Eduardo Treviño.

“Oscar just walked out of the friend’s house and turned himself in there,” Treviño said.

Garcia allegedly shot his neighbor — with whom he had been friends — during a gathering outside his house early Tuesday morning.

Police did not identify the victim, but the man was rushed to Valley Baptist Medical Center in Harlingen. He remained in stable condition there Tuesday afternoon.

Treviño said early interviews with witnesses indicate alcohol was not a factor in the shooting. Garcia lives at the Garza Avenue house with his mother, her boyfriend, his grandfather and other relatives, police said.

A U.S. Army veteran who served in Iraq about three years ago, Garcia usually is “the calmest guy,” his friend Alonzo said.

“It took me by surprise,” he said. “He wasn’t a fighting guy.”

Garcia will likely be charged with one count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon during an arraignment hearing set for this afternoon. The second-degree felony charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000 upon conviction.

Neighbors stood along the street, coffee cups in hand, as the SWAT team surrounded Garcia’s house at sunrise.

“It’s a rude awakening for us on Garza Street,” said Domingo Hernandez, a 38-year-old lifelong resident of the neighborhood. “It’s scary when it’s next door. It’s bad.”

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Jared Taylor covers law enforcement and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4439.