Canadian shot to death in beach town, 2nd tourist killed in southern Mexico in 3 days
A Canadian man was shot to death in Mexico's Pacific coast beach town of Puerto Escondido, prosecutors said Tuesday. He was the second foreign tourist killed in the southern state of Oaxaca in less than a week.
Oaxaca state prosecutors said Tuesday the Canadian man was found dead in a car with a bullet wound on Monday in a neighborhood of Puerto Escondido where few tourists stay.
Prosecutors did not provide any possible motive in the slaying. The dead man was identified as Víctor Masson, 27, but no information on his hometown was available.
The killing comes three days after a man from Argentina was seriously wounded in a machete attack in another coastal town in Oaxaca.
Prosecutors said Monday the Argentine tourist - whose name was not released - died of his injuries at a hospital in Mexico City.
He was among a group of three Argentines were attacked by a Mexican man with a machete on Friday in the hamlet of La Isla, at the mouth of the Laguna de Chacahua, on the Pacific coast. The other two tourists were also wounded in the attack, but their injuries do not appear to be life-threatening.
Laguna de Chacahua is about 60 miles west of Puerto Escondido.
The two killings follow a flurry of other tourist deaths this year in Mexico. A U.S. tourist was shot in the leg in Puerto Morelos in March. The U.S. State Department issued a travel alert that month warning travelers to "exercise increased caution," especially after dark, at resorts like Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Tulum.
That warning came in the wake of the kidnapping of four Americans in Mexico earlier this month. The State Department posted a "Level 4: Do Not Travel" advisory for Tamaulipas, the Mexican state the Americans were in when they were kidnapped.
In June 2022, two Canadians were killed in Playa del Carmen, apparently because of debts between international drug and weapons trafficking gangs. Last January, two other Canadians were killed and one injured in a shooting at a resort near Cancun.
In March 2022, a British resident of Playa del Carmen was shot and killed in broad daylight while traveling with his daughter in his car.
In October 2021, farther south in the laid-back destination of Tulum, two tourists - one a California travel blogger born in India and the other German - were killed when they apparently were caught in the crossfire of a gunfight between rival drug dealers.