Guatemalan woman shot by Nebraska neighbor ‘felt like this was the end’ as she ran to save her grandson

One of the seven people whobefore shot by The Nebraska Neighbor over the weekend he wasn’t sure if his family would survive.

“I felt like it was the end,” Maria Garcia Sanchez said of the shooting, which was so shocking to her that she wasn’t sure what was happening until she saw that her 3-year-old grandson had been hit and sprang into action. .

“I turned around to look and the guy was in the window of the house,” Sanchez said Tuesday. “I picked up the child and hugged him in front of me and protected him because he wasn’t even moving his foot or head. And when I saw that the man was shooting at another, I turned him so that he wouldn’t hit the boy and wouldn’t hurt him anymore. And then I turned him around, and when I did, he grabbed my arm. …he hit my arm and my head.”

Sanchez, her husband, her 3-year-old grandson, her 8-year-old daughter, her 23-year-old son-in-law and two school-aged nieces were injured in the shooting at their home in Crete. All seven have been released from the hospital, police said.

“Right now, thank God, we are recovering a little,” she said. “In pain, but progressing.”

The neighbor, Billy Booth, 74, was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound following Friday’s attack, which the Nebraska State Patrol is investigating as a possible hate crime.

Five weeks before the shooting, the Guatemalan family told police that Booth had tried to start a fight and “showed them.”

At the time, Sanchez said, she told her son, who was being harassed by the suspect, to stop getting involved with the neighbor.

“The guy went up to him and said, ‘Fuck you,’ and that’s when my son got mad and said, ‘What do you want? Why do you talk to me like that?’” she said of the May 21 incident. “I told my son, ‘Don’t bother this man.’ Leave him alone; maybe he’s bad.’”

Weeks later, it was that son who ran to call police after finding several members of his family bleeding and injured after their neighbor shot at them, Sanchez said.

In the May 21 incident, the family called police to report that Booth was swearing at them but that no direct threats were made, according to the police department.

Officers took statements from family members but were “not interested in getting involved in a legal dispute,” according to the police report.

Police said Booth, who was white, had been involved in previous conflicts with several of his white neighbors as well as the Guatemalan family.

Dave Hansen, who lives next door to Booth, said he doesn’t believe the shooting was racially motivated.

“I don’t care what the police say. I lived next door to that guy for 10 years and he wasn’t racist,” Hansen said. “But I feel very lucky he didn’t shoot me.”

Hansen said Booth fired a shotgun at members of the Guatemalan family after some children entered their property to retrieve a soccer ball.

He said Booth often antagonized residents over declining property values.

“Anyone who didn’t take care of their yard was all over you,” Hansen said. “The last seven years have been hell.”

The seven victims were from the state of Huehuetenango, Guatemala, and of mixed legal status to be in the U.S., according to the Office of the Guatemalan Consul General in Omaha.

At the time of the shooting, a family gathering was taking place at the home, authorities said. Two of the victims worked at the Smithfield Foods meat processing plant in Crete, the consul general’s office said.

Sanchez said he works at Smithfield.

“We are thinking about and concerned about our team members who were affected,” Smithfield spokesman Jim Monroe said in a statement. “We hope they focus on their family and recovery at this time.”

Police said calls about Booth and his family date back to 2021, most of them complaints from Booth about “driving behavior.”

During the May altercation, Booth told members of the Guatemalan family to “go home” or “go back to where you came from” and “speak English,” police said.

Billy Muñoz, consul general at the Guatemalan Consulate in Omaha, said his office would do what it could to help the family.

“Unfortunately, [the] The consulate is taking into account that it is an election year,” when hatred “will be more frequent,” said Muñoz.

Saul Lopez, interim executive director of Comunidad Maya Pixan Ixim, a nonprofit group that supports indigenous people in Nebraska, said many immigrants have had trouble adapting to life in the state.

“Nebraska is a very difficult environment for immigrants,” he said. “It’s not an ideal place for immigrants to move. It’s a very difficult place, because many people don’t like immigrants at all.”

This article was originally published in NBCNews. with