GREENACRES, Fla. — A man has been arrested for fatally shooting two people early Thursday in Greenacres.
Shortly after 1 a.m., deputies with the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office (PBSO) responded to reports of a shooting in the 500 block of Fleming Avenue.
Deputies located the bodies of a man and a boy.
The suspect, William Vazquez, 47, remained at the scene and was immediately arrested without incident.
Detectives were at the scene investigating the double shooting as a homicide.
Vazquez was booked into the main Palm Beach County jail and is facing two counts of premeditated first-degree murder.
The victims have not yet been identified.
A neighbor, Nestor Torres, said he heard shots being fired and a woman pleading for help at his door.
"She was screaming Nestor, Nestor, please help me. He killed my kids, he killed my kids. I was terrified quite honestly. I didn’t want to open the door, because I knew the neighbor had a gun and he always had it loaded," Torres said.
Torres said he didn't open the door because he feared the suspect would enter his home and hurt his family, which includes small children.
"My windows were rattling, my kids were crying. They were waking up and not knowing what to do. They were hiding under the bed," Torres said.
Torres said Vazquez's longtime girlfriend, the mother of the victims, was taken to the hospital for evaluation.
The double murder comes on the heels of another shooting on the same street nearly a month ago where a teen died in a drive-by shooting.
PBSO said this shooting is domestic violence-related and is not connected to the recent shooting.
Torres said he's known Vazquez for two years and has had altercations with him in the past, but it got worse when Vazques lost his job.
"He's been telling me he's been stressed out about bills, and he was going to get evicted. The kids aren't listening to him. They're changing; they're not respecting him. He's the type of person that if you don't show him respect, he feels the need to prove a point," Torres said.
"It’s not a bad neighborhood, but it's almost three times in a year that people die here. My parents are old, those persons that age, they worry," said Fernando Fraga, who lives off Fleming Avenue.
