In the latest development on the police blotter, there was a shooting last night in the Gran Plaza mall. The local newspapers report that 3 persons ran into the mall, looking to escape from the Policia Judicial which was after them. At some point, just outside Sanborn’s at the entrance to the mall, shots were fired and one of the bad guys was wounded. The other two were subdued and all were taken away under extreme police escort, including federal and state police, all heavily armed. Some small arms were seized, as well as a grenade.
This after several high-profile drug-related arrests in the last few months, all people from somewhere else of course. The newspaper will always mention that the suspects tenian aspecto fuereño, which means that they didn’t look Yucatecan, whatever that might suggest.
The rumour mill included versions that they were hired thugs, after the chief of the state police, who was having dinner apparently in Italianni’s with his 19 year old son, who just recently ran over and killed two people standing on the median on Paseo de Montejo, waiting to cross the street, just before Christmas. Oops. “It was an accident. It could have happened to anyone” was the police chief’s unfortunate and hardly empathetic comment to one local newspaper. After that, a news blackout with no mention of the case in any of the three newspapers. Nothing happened to the kid. A drug test was not performed because the police lab had “run out of the chemicals” needed to do the test.
Speaking of newspapers, just last week, there was a picture of a 90 year man in jail for robbing a stone basin from a property. A NINETY year old man. It was a family dispute, nothing serious. People here go to jail all the time for robbing a bicycle, or perhaps a piece of copper tubing. But running over some people in your car? Not a problem, apparently.
The other theory, coming back to the Gran Plaza shooting, was that there were 6 people who were intent on robbing the mall. Robbing the mall. Sounds like a plan.
In other words, no one really knows what happened this time. And from the way the newspapers handle information, no one is going to know what really happened any time soon.