At least five people have lost their lives in a shooting on the final night of Mexico’s BPM festival. Just after 3:30am, police received reports of shots being fired at popular club Blue Parrot in in Playa Del Carmen, a popular tourist spot south of Cancun.
Director of police Rodolfo Del Angel confirmed five people had been killed and 15 were injured. He said that the shooting came about after “a disagreement between people inside” the club and security guards had come under fire when they tried to solve the beef. The state’s attorney general said that it appears several of the security guards were amongst the dead.
A clubber, George de Menezes said, “We were in the Blue Parrot nightclub and literally two metres from us shots started going off. 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.
“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.”
He said that everyone tried to run out the club to the beach before another shot was heard. “All of a sudden we heard another shot and everyone dropped again and it kept going on. 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.”
The rush of the crowd running out of the club left several injured under the stampede.
de Menezes added that the shots continued after he returned to his hotel as reports of shootings at other clubs came in.
Attorney general Miguel Angel Pech said the shooting was the act of a lone gunman who entered the nightclub and began to exchange fire with another person, and confirmed it was not a terrorist attack.