A 20-year-old Canadian man was battered and fatally stabbed in a low-rent area of Puerto Vallarta, according to local news reports.
Last Tuesday around 11:20 p.m., the Canadian resident — identified in local media only as Jeremiah — was attacked in the tourist mecca’s Ixtapa area. Witnesses say the man was stabbed with a white, sharp-edged weapon at the intersection of San Juan and San Marcos Sts., in the Los Rios neighbourhood, near the main entrance to the Gethsemane colony.
Cops say officers were called with a report of an injured man bleeding heavily following a brutal assault by several suspects. One witness said he heard an intense noise and several men had climbed off their motorcycles and were battering and stabbing the young Canadian. There was no description of the attackers, who fled leaving Jeremiah dying on the pavement. Another man at the scene could provide little information and left the scene, media reported.
An autopsy revealed hematical spots on the victim’s skull and abdomen, although the wounds were not visible to the naked eye due to it being covered by his clothes, according to media reports.
What to know about the victim
Jeremiah reportedly lived in Puerto Vallarta full time, doing renovations and also did volunteer work, teaching Bible studies. Some reports said that he had lived in Mexico since he was a baby.
“He spoke Spanish fluently, he loved Mexico and felt like native, he had a beautiful girlfriend, and his parents will be devastated till they die,” one commenter wrote on Facebook. So far cops have not released descriptions of the suspects nor have they said whether the victim was targeted.
Canadian killed at pyramids
In recent years, a number of Canadians have been murdered south of the Rio Grande, however some were killed because of their ties to organized crime. On April 20, a Canadian woman — whose name wasn’t released — was shot to death in a shooting at the Teotihuacan pyramids in Mexico. Another Canadian, Delicia Li de Yong, 29, was wounded. Cops say the triggerman was targeting tourists at the historic site near Mexico City. He later killed himself.
