Children Unhurt During Shootings In Prince William
By Sandhya Somashekhar and Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, December 10, 2007
Three people were killed and two others injured when a gunman opened fire in a Woodbridge home yesterday morning, hours after a birthday party for one of five children who were in the house when the shootings occurred.
Anastacio Sanchez-Miranda, 39, of Dumfries was arrested at a relative's home in the Scranton, Pa., area about six hours after the 8:30 a.m. shootings on Grandview Avenue, Prince William County police said.
"The motive of the shooting appears to be related to a domestic situation," Chief Charlie T. Deane said yesterday.
The slain were identified as Juan Manuel Guevara, 28; Rosario Europa, 24; and Gerardo Lopez-Garcia, 25. All lived in the Grandview Avenue house.
The two injured men, ages 18 and 30, are expected to recover, Deane said. Their names were not released yesterday.
Police said Sanchez-Miranda's intended target was his girlfriend, who with the couple's three children had been visiting Europa, her sister, for a 2-year-old's birthday party. The girlfriend, who was not identified, and her children had decided to stay the night.
"They had some ongoing problems -- what, precisely, I do not know," said 1st Sgt. Kim Chinn, a police spokeswoman. "But he came over there angry, obviously."
Sanchez-Miranda, who did not live with his girlfriend and had not been at the party, apparently entered the house through an unlocked door and shot the victims in two upstairs bedrooms, she said.
Sanchez-Miranda's girlfriend had been in her sister's bedroom. They are investigating why she was spared and said that at one point, one of the men had apparently tried to protect her before being killed.
Investigators believe that Sanchez-Miranda fled in his 1997 Ford Taurus shortly after the shootings, eluding police for hours before being picked up in Pennsylvania. He was arrested without incident and is being held by police in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., pending extradition.
The house in which the shootings occurred had been rented by Europa. She and her companion, Guevara, had a 4-year-old son, police said.
For most of the day, the corner of Grandview Avenue and Maurice Drive was blocked off while investigators collected evidence from the white-and-brick home, which had red holiday bows in an upstairs window. Eight people lived in the house, Chinn said, most extended relatives. Seven adults and five children were inside at the time of the shootings, she said.
Neighbors in the community of small brick ramblers and split-level homes said the occupants of the Grandview Avenue house largely kept to themselves.
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