Mexican officials say pyramid shooter acted alone, admired Columbine

MEXICO CITY (CN) — In her morning press conference Tuesday, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum lamented Monday’s shooting at the Teotihuacán pyramids that left a Canadian tourist dead and 13 international tourists wounded.

The president said the shooter was not related to organized crime and was influenced by other episodes abroad.

José Luis Cervantes Martínez, attorney general of the state of Mexico, called it a copycat crime. The National Guard found in the shooter’s backpack an AI-generated photo of the shooter posing with the teenagers responsible for the Columbine High School massacre, which occurred on the same day, April 20, in Colorado back in 1999.

Sheinbaum pledged to tighten security at archaeological and tourist sites in Mexico and said she will take the proper protocols going forward.

“Yesterday’s incident was an isolated event, unprecedented in Mexico,” she said. “Our obligation as a government is to take the necessary measures to prevent such a situation from happening again. But it’s clear — we all know it, all Mexicans — that this is a situation that has never occurred before.”

The president added that the shooter had psychological problems. On Wednesday, she will unveil a government plan to strengthen mental health.

Disturbing phone video of the attack recorded by witnesses on Monday suggests the shooter deliberately chose the pyramids for his crime: a deeply historical and culturally significant site that draws outside visitors, whom he resented.

The shooter in the video can be heard saying, “You who have come from goddamn Europe are not going to return, if you move I sacrifice you. This was built for sacrifice, bastards! Not for you to take a photo.”

The shooting took place on the Pyramid of the Moon, the second-largest pyramid in the ancient holy city built between the 1st and 7th centuries A.D. It became the largest and most influential pre-Aztec city in Mesoamerica before its central area burned, fell to ruin and was abandoned between 600 and 750 A.D.

The Aztecs discovered the city centuries later and named it Teotihuacán, a Nahuatl word meaning roughly “the place where gods were created.”

On Tuesday, Cervantes Martínez identified the shooter as Julio César Jasso Ramírez.

He relayed that the National Guard shot Jasso Ramírez in the leg during the aggression, and at that time, he took his firearm and shot himself.

The Mexican attorney general said the shooter acted alone.

“The aggressor planned and executed his action in a solitary manner, and there is absolutely no indication, up to this point, to establish that he had external collaboration or that various actors participated in the commission of this act,” he said.

Cervantes Martínez said the shooter used a Smith and Wesson .38 Special revolver that the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has no trace of dating back to 1968, when the Gun Control Act was made law.

Gun laws in Mexico are highly restrictive, and only one store exists in the country to purchase firearms, run by the Secretariat of National Defense.

Omar García Harfuch, head of the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection, said that at Sheinbaum’s request, security will be greatly increased in tourist and archaeological areas, including physical patrols and surveillance.

“The presence of the National Guard will be increased in absolute coordination with the local authorities; preventive reviews and access controls will be strengthened; surveillance systems will be strengthened in these spaces; and today this coordination with the Ministry of Culture begins to improve these protocols,” said Harfuch.

Harfuch added the National Guard’s quick response to the incident saved lives.