Just two weeks into his new job, Puerto Vallarta’s municipal police chief survived an assassination attempt on Monday morning.
Having only taken up his post at the beginning of the month, Roberto Rodriguez Preciado was attacked just before 8 a.m. while driving through Vallarta’s Colonia Emiliano Zapata.
Two men armed with AK-47 and AR-15 assault rifles opened fire on his vehicle at the intersection of Basilio Badillo and Insurgentes. The assailants then threw a fragmentation grenade, causing Rodriguez’s driver to crash into a taxi parked outside a pharmacy two blocks down, on the corner with Lazaro Cardenas.
Rodriguez and his bodyguards escaped the burning vehicle but the would-be assassins threw another grenade which exploded on the sidewalk. The shrapnel wounded at least three innocent bystanders, including two children.
The two men then fled in a White Ford Lobo pickup truck, which was found abandoned several minutes later, with the guns and grenades still inside. Rodriguez and his bodyguards survived the attack without injury.