Mexico: Two Canadians shot dead Riviera Maya

Three Canadians, were shot Friday afternoon at the five-star Xcaret Hotel on the Mexican Riviera Maya by an unidentified gunman, media reports that two of the three have died of their wounds.

Lucio Hernández Gutiérrez, Secretario de Seguridad Pública del Estado de Quintana Roo, posted a tweet which asked the public’s assistance in identifying the individual responsible for the shooting.

According to witnesses, the shooting followed a heated discussion, and is believed to be drug related. The attacker, approached the victims and shot at least four rounds into the three Canadians.

Drug related shootings are a recurring theme in the tourist locales of Quintana Roo. This is the third shooting which has occurred along the Riviera Maya, just south of Cancun within the last six months. In November, a group of men attacked two drug dealers on the beaches in proximity to the Hyatt Ziva Riviera hotel in Puerto Morelos, killing the two and wounding a number of guests. In October, a shootout on the streets of Tulum killed two tourists who were sitting in a restaurant – in the wrong spot at the wrong time. And inexplicably, in December a group of men on jet skis approached the beach of Cancun and sprayed the beach with gunfire.

Securely Travel Advice

The odds of something untoward happening during a vacation trip to Cancun, Riviera Maya or other locales is admittedly low, yet it is not zero. Many major cities in the United States have daily shootings, yet people go about their business.

In Mexico, if one purchases narcotics while on vacation, you are raising the odds significantly that something will go horribly wrong and thus these odds are no longer near zero.

The drug business in Mexico is brutal. Unknown to you, the tourist or business traveler is what is the immediate state of turf battles between rival entities, or the degree of malevolence which an individual already engaged in one crime is willing to engage in a second crime where you are the target.

Travelers should maintain a healthy 360-degree awareness of what is going on in proximity to them and be prepared to react in the unlikely, but possible, event something like these shootings occur.