The July 19 shootout in Puerto Peñasco made headlines because of its death toll, but it was just the culmination of a series of attacks in the beach town, including a July 17 home invasion targeting U.S. tourists.
The U.S. Consulate in Nogales, Sonora, issued a new warning Tuesday to Americans conducting business in or visiting Rocky Point, as the city is known, to "use caution."
U.S. Consul General Chad Cummins revealed Tuesday that there have been four assaults, home invasions or robberies on Americans living in or visiting the town in about the last four months. The news contradicts the long-held belief about crime there - that while drug traffickers exist in Rocky Point, the town is safe for foreign tourists.
The worst incident involving Americans occurred July 17, just two days before a broad-daylight shootout in which five suspected members of criminal groups and a policeman were killed.
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In the early-morning hours that Tuesday, five armed men entered a home in Las Conchas, a beachfront neighborhood populated largely by Americans, the president of the area's homeowners association said in an email to property owners.
"They restrained the individuals who were renting the house," wrote president Ginger Beauchamp. "These men stole electronics, bedding, jewelry and an unidentified amount of cash."
A woman in the home was sexually assaulted, the consulate said in a new "security message" issued Tuesday.
A home invasion in preceding months left an American resident of Puerto Peñasco seriously injured, Cummins said.
A spokeswoman for the Sonoran Attorney General's Office said Tuesday that they consider the July 17 home invasion and July 19 shootout unrelated.
The shootout apparently involved members of organized-crime groups, who shot at each other in a central area between 5 and 6 p.m. That led to a second shootout involving Sonoran state police, in which one officer and one gunman were killed.
One of the gunmen killed was José Ramón Sabori Cisneros. He had been a regionally important drug trafficker who for a time operated the Sasabe corridor for the Sinaloa Cartel, said Anthony Coulson, who headed the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's Tucson office until retiring in 2010.
While violence in Mexico has been commonplace for the last six years, Puerto Peñasco had largely escaped serious incidents, and attacks on foreigners were minimal. The home invasion in Las Conchas was unprecedented as far as Beauchamp knows.
Many Americans own property in that beach-side strip of homes, which stretches east from downtown Rocky Point. Many real-estate offices help vacation-property owners rent out their homes to tourists.
In February, the U.S. State Department reiterated an earlier warning about travel to Puerto Peñasco.
That warning recommended that Americans travel in the daytime using only the road from Lukeville to get to Rocky Point, and that they not travel on other connecting roads in Mexico.
On StarNet: Read Tim Steller's blog, Señor Reporter, at azstarnet.com/senorreporter
Reporter Joseph Treviño contributed. Contact reporter Tim Steller at tsteller@azstarnet.com or 807-8427.
