A man with an international criminal history was the victim of a brazen midday murder inside a fitness center in Cancún on Wednesday.
Identified as Samy Tamouro, the man in his late 30s was shot at least eight times by two assailants who had arrived at the upscale Marina Puerto Cancún shopping plaza on motorcycle, according to Reporteros Ahora on Facebook.
The shooters went straight for Tamouro, who was working out at the Total Sport gym in the plaza, and gunned him down just before noon. He was taken by ambulance to a nearby IMSS hospital, where his death was confirmed.
Borderlands Beat reported that Tamouro was a “connected drug trafficker” who fled Canada last year after “a convicted hitman responsible for at least four murders” began cooperating with Canadian authorities as an informant.
Tamouro also had “a string of drug trafficking-related convictions and was tied to the infamous Quebec Hells Angels,” added the website, which reports on cartel-related crime.
Tamouro is of Israeli origin, according to the newspaper Reforma, though other outlets have suggested that he originally hails from Morocco. Cancún-based Diario Cambio 22 posted a partial picture of a Quebec driver’s license with his picture, and he was identified as a Canadian in news reports.
In 2017, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to having gang connections and to receiving approximately US $135,000 from the sale of drugs. The charges came as part of a large-scale investigation into gang activity and drug trafficking in Montreal.
The Montreal Gazette reported that Tamouro was 37 and that evidence linking him to a Hells Angels support gang that engaged in drug trafficking came after a convict, Frédérick Silva, turned informant last year.
Police sources recently said that “some well-known organized crime figures left Quebec” after Silva flipped, the paper reported.
The Quintana Roo Attorney General’s Office stated it has opened an investigation into the shooting, which wasn’t the first time a Canadian with a criminal record was murdered in a region that’s become a hotspot for international crime.
In January 2022, two Canadians — one wanted by Interpol — were murdered at a resort in Playa del Carmen, apparently over debts between international drug and arms trafficking gangs.
