At least five people, one of them a foreigner, died in the early hours of Tuesday in a fire that broke out in the Lacoss Night Club, a venue located south of the city of Puebla, as reported by the Secretary of State Security, Francisco Sánchez. “We have two lines, one is drug dealing and another probable one is the collection of basic tariffs. But at this moment we are still adjusting the investigations,” Sánchez said in a press conference in which he assured that the investigations are already advanced.
Firefighters and five ambulances arrived on site, immediately transporting the seven victims to the Cholula General Hospital and Traumatology and Orthopedics, located north of the city. One of them died on the spot, poisoned by the smoke from the flames. Three other people, who were injured and were still in the area when the authorities arrived, remained alone without providing further information.
Sánchez said his agency already has videos, testimonies and a cell phone involved in the case, and said he would provide more details later in the day. “We have some people linked to this fact that we obviously cannot reveal. All this has already been addressed to the public prosecutor (of Puebla, Idamis Pastor) so that investigations can first be carried out and, subsequently, the arrest of those we consider the alleged perpetrators”, he indicated, without providing further details on those identified.
The secretary stated that all the information collected by his agents has already been transferred to Pastor so that it can be integrated into the investigation file. “We will help with the investigation where appropriate,” he added. The Puebla Prosecutor’s Office has not yet released any statement.
The state of Puebla ended 2024 with the third highest rate of crime victims per 100,000 inhabitants in Mexico, with 29,209 victims, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi). Only Tlaxcala (first, with 30,498) and Aguascalientes (29,473) are in the lead. Puebla’s data represents a change of 15.9 percentage points compared to 2023, when that rate was 25,196. The same organization states that 78.2% of its inhabitants consider the territory unsafe, a figure a little distant from the 90.1% of Morelos or the 87.3% of the State of Mexico.
