EAGLE PASS, Texas – A busy Saturday night quickly turned tragic when the sound of slot machines was overpowered by gunfire at the Kickapoo Lucky Eagle Casino.
“The casino was packed, the machines were completely full, everybody was excited for the drawing of the car,” said Manuel Lujan, who left the establishment just minutes before the shooting.
In the hours following the shooting, the Eagle Pass community grappled with the loss of Marcus Antley and Alicia Sanchez and what the shooting means for the border town moving forward.
“It’s really sad to hear about the families who lost loved ones,” Felipe Martinez said.
Martinez and his wife, Berta, were woken up around 1 a.m. on Sunday by a phone call from their niece, who was escaping through the back door.
“A lot of people go there from out of town,” Martinez said, “but we never thought something would happen there.”
Jesus Zamora, who was inside the casino when the shooting took place, was stunned by the lack of preparation.
“What concerns me is that there is no emergency protocol,” Zamora said in Spanish.
Zamara said the chaos could have been handled by security.
Lujan said the shooting gives him pause about coming back to the casino.
“I’m going to have second thoughts about coming back. It’ll probably be a while,” Lujan said. “I imagine the locals themselves will, (but) you know, they’ll probably be hesitant about coming out here as well.”
In a news release, the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas Police Department said there was no ongoing threat to the community.
The suspect, Keryan Jones, 34, was extradited to Maverick County after he was apprehended in Wilson County.
He was arrested on two counts of capital murder and five counts of assault with a deadly weapon, the Wilson County Sheriff’s Office told KSAT 12.
The casino will remain closed as the investigation is ongoing, but the shooting on Saturday night, along with the attack on a Michigan church Sunday morning, has many feeling uneasy.
“It’s sad to see what’s going on in our country,” Lujan said. “It really is.”
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