Six people were shot to death in an attack on an unlicensed drug rehabilitation center in the Cofradía neighborhood of Tlaquepaque Sunday, July 24. Five men and a woman, between 18 and 50 years old, died in the assault.
Witness reports indicted that around a half-dozen armed and hooded men arrived at the property in a white Nissan Frontier, before storming the property and firing off around 40 rounds and escaping.
Security experts suggested that revenge or score settling by a criminal gang was the likely the motive for the attack, although Jalisco authorities did not offer any of its own theories.
Drug rehab centers are prime targets for criminal gangs, according to Rubén Ortega Montes, a member of the Security and Justice Observatory of the University of Guadalajara, because they attract drug addicts who may have ties to gangs, or debts with their dealers, while few of the properties have any security measures in place.
Ortega Montes criticized the state government for “papering over” the high levels of insecurity in the Guadalajara metropolitan area, calling it “terrifying” that criminal gangs are able “roam the city at will.” He accused the state governor and the mayor of Tlaquepaque, both from the Citizen’s Movement, of negligence in combatting violent crime, and failing to come up with any workable preventative strategies.