MEXICO CITY-
Police tried Monday to determine who wounded two Canadian tourists by firing into a hotel lobby in Mexico’s Pacific resort of Acapulco.
Rita Callara, 55, of the Niagara Falls region in Ontario, and her companion Biagg Mandella, age unknown, suffered minor injuries to their legs after being grazed by bullets at the Casa Inn Hotel late Saturday, Acapulco police spokesman Victor Hernandez told The Associated Press in a phone interview. The two were treated and released from a local hospital.
No one answered the telephone at the Canadian embassy in Mexico City on Monday, a federal holiday commemorating the Mexican constitution. Mexican police said they had yet to make any arrests.
Speaking from Acapulco, Callara told the Toronto, Canada, radio station AM640 that the ordeal has not frightened her and she’s looking forward to her next Mexican vacation.
“What about Toronto? Every night they kill people,” Callara told the radio station.
Callara said she was treated well by police and hospital authorities.
In contrast, several other Canadians have been killed recently in Mexican tourist resorts, and their families complained that police did not handle their cases well at all.
Adam DePrisco, 19, from Woodbridge, Ontario, was killed in Acapulco last month, and Guerrero state officials said he was hit by a car. However, DePrisco’s family believes he was beaten and have cited doctors who said DePrisco’s injuries “did not indicate that it was a hit-and-run accident.”
And in February 2006, Woodbridge residents Domenic and Nancy Ianiero with their throats slashed in their hotel room in Cancun on the Caribbean coast. Those killings have not been solved and family members say Mexican authorities botched the investigation.
Acapulco has suffered a wave of killings as rival drug cartels fight over coastal smuggling routes. Control over a burgeoning local drug market is another motivation for the violence.
Last year, at least six heads of decapitated police officers and alleged drug smugglers were found in the resort and nearby towns. One washed up on a popular beach in the tourist zone. The rest were dumped on the streets.
President Felipe Calderon, who took power in December, has sent more than 24,000 federal police and soldiers to fight drug gangs in regions ravaged by drug violence. More than 7,000 troops arrived in the Acapulco region last month.
