Two police officers killed in shootout in Guadalajara

An unexplained shootout on a busy Guadalajara intersection left two police officers dead and two Colombians wounded on Friday evening.

The firefight took place at approximately 6:30 p.m. on the corner of Terranova and Avenida Mexico in the city’s upmarket Providencia neighborhood.

Having reportedly just left a local restaurant, the two police officers were traveling in a gray Dodge Ram with Colombian pair Juan Carlos and Maria Ines Pacheco Bercerra when a white Mercedes Benz pulled up in front of them, blocking their exit. At least two assailants armed with AK-47 assault rifles then opened fire from a green Nissan Pathfinder with Jalisco license plates.

The police officers returned fire but one was killed on the spot and the other died in hospital, according to Mexico’s Proceso magazine. The two Colombians, whom local newspapers identified as either a couple or brother and sister, were also hospitalized.

The assassins are thought to have escaped in a black Chevrolet Silverado, while those in the white Mercedez Benz also evaded arrest.

Pablo Villaseñor y Manuel Acuña agresores del occiso d Terranova abandonan camioneta Pathfinder con 2 AK47 @AlertaGDL pic.twitter.com/TY1Pb9V37n

— Eloy Arellano (@Eloy_Arellano) September 6, 2014

Agents from the Jalisco Prosecutor General’s Office recovered the abandoned Pathfinder, which had been struck by at least ten bullets, several blocks away. Inside they discovered a gold-plated AK-47 and a nine-millimeter handgun. There were also blood stains indicating that one of the killers had been wounded in the shootout.

It remains unclear why the police officers and their Colombian companions were attacked or who the intended target of the hit was. Authorities in El Salto, a small town on the southeastern outskirts of the Guadalajara metropolitan area, confirmed that the policemen were bodyguards of Francisco Aceves, the local Director of Public Security.

It is not known if Aceves was present during the attack but the El Salto municipal government said in a statement that his escorts were off-duty on Friday and that it had no knowledge of their activities at the time of the incident. What the two Colombians were doing with the pair also remains a mystery.

Adding further intrigue to this unexplained turn of events, local radio host Pablo Lemus Navarro reported that Jalisco Governor Aristoteles Sandoval was traveling along the same point of Avenida Terranova at the time of the shootout, raising the possibility that he could have been the intended victim.

Camionetas que transportan a Gobernador @aristotelessd se encontraban al mismo tiempo de la ejecución en Av Terranova pic.twitter.com/ElNmDH7u8O

— Pablo Lemus Navarro (@pablo_lemus) September 6, 2014