8 killed in drive-by shooting at beer depot

EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – The mayor of a town 20 miles southeast of Mexico City is calling for help following the shooting deaths of eight men at a beer depot.

“Huitzilac is in mourning,” Mayor Rafael Vargas Muñoz of Huitzilac, Morelos, said on social media following the Saturday night attack. “The city government condemns the acts of violence befalling our city. We demand from the federal and state governments support to reduce violence and from the Attorney General’s Office a prompt resolution of these regrettable events, and to find the culprits.”

A security camera video aired by several Mexican news outlets shows two cars driving by the portal of the business and gunmen shooting at customers. Some victims attempt to get up from benches and run but are instantly felled by bullets. Four men died on the scene and four more at hospitals early Sunday, the Morelos Attorney General’s Office said.

“This office is (conducting an investigation) to identify those responsible for these acts of violence,” the state agency said in a statement Sunday.

Huitzilac and a neighboring community called Tres Marias have recorded three multiple killings since May 1. The first one involved three men shot dead in a parked red Ford F-150. Two men and a woman were killed in a car on a highway leading to Mexico City on May 10. And on May 8, a police official was shot four times but survived an apparent assassination attempt.

Mexican officials have told local news media drug cartel activity has proliferated in Morelos in the past few years. Between six and 14 drug gangs including the transnational Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) operate in Morelos, according to reports.

Last week, the Morelos AG’s Office urged the business community not to pay “protection” or extortion money to criminal gangs and to call police, instead.

The U.S. State Department in August issued an advisory urging Americans to reconsider travel to Morelos due to crime.