A 6-year-old boy died after being caught in the crossfire Wednesday during a shootout between police officers and a criminal suspect in Tijuana.
Municipal police were conducting surveillance in the Mariano Matamoros neighborhood when officers observed a man carrying a firearm. When they approached the man he began shooting at them and fled into a vacant lot next to the home of Yurem Abdiel González Carrasco.
The second-grader was playing in his yard with his 4-year-old sister when he was struck by a bullet in the abdomen.
The suspect was also shot and died at the scene.
Yurem was taken to the hospital where he died a few hours later.
The boy’s mother was inconsolable, demanding justice and a full investigation into the incident, including ballistics to find out who killed her son.
The media outlet Punto Norte reported that the bullet came from a rifle, which may mean that police fired the fatal shot.
So far this year, 1,430 people have been murdered in Tijuana, 71 in September alone.
There were 2,185 people killed last year, 334 fewer murders than the previous year.
Last year Tijuana was declared the most dangerous city in the world by the non-profit Citizen’s Council for Public Safety and Criminal Justice with a murder rate of 134 per 100,000 inhabitants.
The second most dangerous city was Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua (104.54 homicides per 100,000), which is also on the border with the United States.
Source: El Sol de Tijuana (sp)
