Expatriate residents in the coastal town of Melaque area will follow the lead of their Lake Chapala counterparts and put pressure on municipal authorities for improved security in the wake of the slaying of a Canadian citizen this week.
Robin Wood, 68, was shot to death during a home invasion in Villa Obregon in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
Wood, 68, from Salt Spring Island, British Colombia, was staying at the vacation house of his friend Arvid Chalmers, a realtor also from Salt Spring.
According to local reports, the pair had returned to Chalmers’ home after attending a benefit concert in La Manzanilla, about 20 miles up the coast.
Reports indicate that at around 1 a.m. two masked men suddenly appeared inside the property, gaining access from the roof, running down the stairs and threatening Chalmers and Wood.
Wood apparently became upset when one of the men tried to grab one of his travel bags. He was shot at point-bank range after becoming involved in a scuffle with the gunman, reports say.
Wood is a retired mechanic who has been visiting Mexico regularly for the past four years, according to the Victoria Times Colonist.
Following the killing, locals and expatriates have come together to put pressure on Cihuatlan authorities to improve vigilance and security in the Melaque Bay area.
“If we don’t do something now, nothing will be done,” said Lucy Villarreal, who runs a construction and design company in Melaque.
Villareal has already obtained 300 signatures for a petition to be delivered to the Cihuatlan mayor and hopes to get many more at an open meeting held later this week.
“We want a meeting with the mayor to discuss what can be done,” she said.
According to Villareal, the security situation has worsened considerably in the past three or four months, with reports of house break-ins, assaults on the street and even thefts of laptops on the beach.
“This used to be a very tranquil place, where everybody knew each other,” said Villareal, who says the number of visiting foreigners has dropped substantially this year.
Villareal admitted that many foreign residents have been “frightened” by this week’s events.
Dozens of condolences for Wood were posted on local message boards this week. He was described as a warm, laid-back character. “He didn’t have a mean bone in his body,” a former colleague in Salt Spring said.
In one well-written blog – steveinmexico.blogspot.com – Steve Cotton of Villa Obregon noted that many people posted comments saying they were evacuating Melaque because of the incident.
Cotton, however, won’t be one of them. “I hope the murders are caught. I hope justice is done. But leaving Melaque will not accomplish any of those ends,” he writes defiantly. “I am not leaving. In fact, I will soon be flying back home to Melaque in a few days. And I intend to bring as many people as I can.”
Some reports suggest that investigators have identified one of the assailants, although a spokesperson for the Jalisco Attorney General’s Office (PGJEJ) in Guadalajara could not confirm this.