Neighbors were quick to to scoop up what they could carry after a beer truck overturned in Campeche on Saturday morning.
Motorists abandoned their cars on the Mérida-Campeche highway at San Francisco Kobén where men, women and children ran quickly to haul off entire cartons of free booze.
In photos and videos of the incident that surfaced on social media, some especially eager people can be seen arranging and tying down stacks of beer cartons on tricycles.
Police were curiously absent during the looting despite their presence at a checkpoint just a short distance down the road, emboldening residents. One man cried out, “It’s a party in San Francisco Kobén,” while neighbors that had already carried beer cartons back to their homes returned for more.
In all, residents made off with more than 1,000 cartons of beer.
Though authorities have not yet determined what caused the truck to turn over, initial coverage of the incident suggested that the driver may have been speeding and lost control.
Stories of looted beer trucks are not uncommon but in the most recent before Saturday’s incident neighbors took a different approach. They rallied to prevent looting and helped reload the cargo in a replacement truck after an accident in May in Ixtlahuaca, México state.
Source: El Universal (sp), Tribuna Campeche (sp)
