A 29-year-old California-based Indian-origin woman techie, who travelled to Mexico to celebrate her birthday, was one of the two foreign tourists killed in a shootout between two drug gangs in the Caribbean coast resort of Tulum, according to media reports.
Anjali Ryot was killed along with another German tourist on Wednesday night in the crossfire, Californianewstimes.com news portal reported.
Anjali and her husband Utkarsh Shrivastava had gone to Mexico to celebrate her 30th birthday on October 22 from their current home at San Jose city in California, her father, KD Ryot, told PTI from his home in Himachal Pradesh.
Mr Shrivastava informed her younger brother Ashish, who currently lives in Chicago, that she was shot dead in the Caribbean coast resort of Tulum soon after they had taken ice cream from a stall following their dinner, he added.
Ashish informed the family in India about the tragedy on October 21.
Anjali’s Instagram account listed her as a travel blogger from Himachal Pradesh, living in San Jose, California.
Anjali has been working as a Senior Site Reliability Engineer on LinkedIn since July. She was previously employed by Yahoo, the Californianewstimes.com report said.
The incident happened when Anjali and four other foreign tourists were dining on the terrace of La Malquerida restaurant when four men armed with assault rifles fired at an adjoining table in the premises around 10:30 pm, the Spanish newspaper El Pais reported.
The stray bullets hit the foreigners. Anjali and the German woman were killed, while the three others — from Germany and the Netherlands — were wounded. Authorities point to a confrontation between rival organised crime gangs. Anjali and her friends were just the collateral victims, it said.
The fight was between two rival groups that operate drug sales in the area, the Quintana Roo state prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
