Gunman kills several at Cancun nightclub
By
Yaron Steinbuch
January 16, 2017 | 8:30am |
Updated
Five people were killed and several injured when a gunman opened fire early Monday at a nightclub in the popular Mexican resort of Playa Del Carmen – sparking a stampede during a music festival, officials said.
The gunfire erupted about 3:30 a.m. at the Blue Parrot club just south of Cancun on the closing night of the BPM electronic music festival, which is popular with British and American tourists.
Two Canadians, an Italian and a Colombian were among those killed in the attack, which also left 15 people injured — some in the rush to flee from the bustling nightspot, officials said.
Miguel Angel Pech, the attorney general of Quintana Roo state, said the gunman entered the club and began to exchange fire with another person inside. Other reports suggested the shooting occurred outside.
BPM organizers said three members of their security team were killed while responding to the shooting, which Pech said was not related to terrorism.
One of the festival organizers was believed to have been shot after an argument about the fee for the event,
The Sun of the UK reported, citing local media.
State police chief Rodolfo Del Angel told Milenio TV that the shooting was the result of “a disagreement between people inside” the nightclub.
Six people were taken into custody, the Playa Weekly reported.
“We are overcome with grief over this senseless act of violence and we are cooperating fully with local law enforcement and government officials as they continue their investigation,” BPM said on its Facebook page.
No Americans were known to have been among the victims, CBS news reported.
Video footage uploaded to social media showed people fleeing from the club and through the streets.
An editor for the London-based music magazine Mixmag was in the backstage area of the club when shots were fired.
“People started running because there’s an exit in the back. We stopped and hid behind a cement wall, then crawled under a metal table,” said Valerie Lee, Mixmag’s US digital editor, Agence France-Presse reported.
“Security guards at first didn’t think it was shots and kept claiming it was fireworks, saying everything was OK. Then people kept running and said they saw a gun. We kept hiding until they opened the back gate and we ran outside,” Lee said.
Lee tweeted that the music was still playing five minutes after the shots were heard. The music, she wrote, was “super loud, likely those inside didn’t even hear.”
Sonny Shilcock, 20, from Essex, UK, was with four pals when the shooting erupted.
“I was at the front of the club but heard about five very loud bangs and thought it was part of the DJ’s set until panic spread through crowd,” he told The Sun of the UK.
“We’d carried on dancing until a wave of fear went through the place and everyone hit the deck,” he said. “I was one of the last to get out and saw one man who was clearly dead covered in a lot of blood.”
A Scottish DJ playing at the festival — known as “Jackmaster” – tweeted: “Someone has come into the club in Playa Del Carmen and opened fire. 4-5 dead and many wounded.”
“This is a very very sad situation. Tryna get my head around it still. Thoughts and condolences to all affected,” he added later,
the Telegraph of the UK reported.
George de Menezes
told The Independent newspaper that bullets whizzed by just feet from him.
“No one took it seriously, but I knew straight away that it was a gun and dropped to the floor, then everyone dropped with me,” he said. “The music stopped and so did the shots, so we got up and one man was down on the floor and looked dead, and another man had been shot but was trying to stay on his feet.
“Everyone tried to run out to the beach from the club and all of a sudden we heard another shot and everyone dropped again and it kept going on,” he said.
“Finally got out from there and got up to the Main Street and there was another man dead on the street, so everyone started running for their lives.”
He said he heard more gunfire after getting back to his hotel — along with reports of shootings at other clubs.
“We were the first ones to hit the ground and watched it all unfold,” he told the paper. “If he’d turned on us, we’d probably be dead.”
There also were reports of another shooting at a club called The Jungle, The Telegraph reported.
The BPM Festival, a 10-day annual event started in 2008, was scheduled to last from Jan. 6 to Jan. 15. The shooting occurred on the last night of festivities.
