At least one Canadian dead after shooting at Mexican nightclub
Posted January 16, 2017 12:35 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
CANCUN, MEXICO (NEWS 1130) – At least one Canadian is among five people killed today in a shooting attack at an electronic music festival in Mexico’s Caribbean coast resort of Playa del Carmen. And the Canadian government says at least two Canadians were among the injured in the same attack.
The attorney general of Quintana Roo state said several of the dead appear to have been part of the security detail at the 10-day BPM electronic music festival. Miguel Angel Pech said the shooting occurred about 2:30 a.m. at the Blue Parrot nightclub, one of the BPM Festival’s venues in Playa del Carmen, just south of Cancun.
Pech said a lone gunman apparently entered the nightclub and began to exchange fire with another person inside. Festival security personnel tried to stop the shooting and came under fire.
A man from Maple Ridge who has been living in Playa del Carmen says the attack happened 10 minutes from where he lives. “I was nervous riding my bike to the shuttle where I get picked up for work,” says Mitch Cudby. “Just nervous that it’s happened in your backyard. It’s the bar and club scene that we all go to on our days off. We go and have a casual drink, we bar hop, and it’s just very, very surreal to have this happen in your own back yard.”
Cudby says local media reports indicate the attack could be linked to drug gangs. “Thank God we didn’t decide to go last night,” says Cudby, who has been to the Blue Parrot nightclub and was thinking of checking out the music festival this week. “Every day, every week, other areas of Mexico, stuff like this happens. It’s mostly all involving the cartel.”
A man from Calgary was in the club when the shots were fired. “I saw several people get hit. When we were coming out the bouncer was definitely dead on the floor and I saw a bunch of other people who were wounded. I don’t know if they were deceased. We saw one guy who got shot and he just went down to the ground and crawled over to a tree,” explains Aleksandar Samardzija.
Global Affairs Canada says it was able to confirm at least one Canadian fatality among the victims and were looking to verifying about the second reported Canadian death.
