Mexico – At least 20 people were killed on Sunday in a massacre at an underground cockfight in Zinapécuaro, Michoacán.
According to Reuters, the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) got into a fight with the Familia Michoacana criminal organization and Los Correa, a local gang.
Reuters reported:
Gunmen massacred 20 people on Sunday night in a suspected gangland attack at a clandestine cockfighting venue in western Mexico, authorities said, in one of the worst mass shootings under the current government.
The killings took place in Las Tinajas in the state of Michoacan, where the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) has been fighting local gangs for control of drug routes.
“It was a massacre of one group by another,” President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told a regular news conference, expressing his regret at the deaths.
He blamed criminal gangs in the area for the killings and said a team was on the way to investigate the crime.
Seventeen of the dead were men and three were women, and officials secured 15 vehicles as part of the investigation, Michoacan state prosecutors said in a statement.
According to reports, three Americans were among the people killed at the cockfighting venue.
KXAN reported:
Mexican authorities have identified 19 of the 20 people shot to death Sunday in a clandestine cockfighting ring in Zinapecuaro, Michoacan.
The victims include three U.S. citizens whom the Michoacan Attorney General’s Office only identified by first names: Melissa S., Salvador A. and Jose Abiel A. The latter allegedly was the owner of the unlicensed cockfighting arena inside a ranch called El Paraiso (Paradise); the woman was one of three females killed in the attack.
KION-TV identified the deceased woman as Melissa Silva, 36 and a mother of four, and said her sister, Arleth, 16 and a resident of Chicago, was among six wounded. The station quoted their brother, Alex, as saying the sisters were vacationing in Mexico, where family members live.