A 27-year-old gunman opened fire on tourists at Mexico's Teotihuacán pyramids on Monday, killing a Canadian woman and wounding at least 13 others, including six Americans, before taking his own life at the scene. Mexican investigators said they found materials in his backpack tied to the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, and witnesses described him shouting about the site being "a place for sacrifices."
The attack struck one of the Western Hemisphere's most visited archaeological landmarks, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that draws millions of visitors each year. It unfolded in broad daylight, captured on video that spread rapidly online, and left foreign tourists from at least six countries scrambling for cover on the ancient stone steps.
For the six Americans hospitalized after the shooting, the incident is the latest reminder that Mexico's security crisis is not confined to cartel territory or border towns. It can find you at a pyramid.
Law enforcement in the region received initial reports of gunfire at 11:20 a.m. Monday, Fox News Digital reported. The National Guard responded quickly. By 11:45 a.m., officials said, the gunman had turned the weapon on himself.
In those 25 minutes, the scene was chaos. Video from the site showed the shooter standing atop one of the pyramids, firing as tourists tried to flee down the steep steps. A tour guide who witnessed the attack told The Associated Press that panic spread instantly.
Brenda Lee of Vancouver, who was at the site, described the moment the crowd realized what was happening. She told CTV News:
"Before we knew it, someone said, 'No, that's gunfire, run,' and we saw people coming off the top. There were thousands of people there and there were a lot of gunshots that just kept coming."
Another witness, a tour guide at the scene, described the scramble down the pyramid. "Some people, because they were scared... threw themselves face-down on the ground, and the rest of us started to go down," the guide told the AP.
Seven people were wounded by gunfire, the Washington Times reported. Others were injured in the stampede to escape. Among those taken to hospitals were six Americans, along with tourists from Colombia, Russia, Brazil, the Netherlands, and Canada. The one fatality was a Canadian woman.
At a Tuesday news conference, Mexican authorities identified the gunman as Julio César Jasso Ramírez, a 27-year-old from Mexico City. He acted alone, officials said, and died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Investigators recovered a gun, a knife, and 52 live rounds of.38 special caliber ammunition inside a plastic bag.
This was no spontaneous outburst. Mexican authorities said Jasso Ramírez had visited the pyramids on several occasions beforehand to scout the terrain. Mexico State Prosecutor José Luis Cervantes Martínez said investigators built what he called a "psychopathic profile" of the attacker.
Cervantes Martínez described the profile as one "characterized by a tendency to copy situations that occurred in other places, at other times and involving other figures." He laid out the planning in stark terms, as Newsmax reported:
"Made preliminary visits on multiple occasions to the archaeological site, stayed in hotels near the site ahead of time, and from there planned his violent acts."
Officials said the gunman's backpack contained "literature, images and handwritten manuscripts, all allegedly related to violent events known to have occurred in the United States in April 1999." The reference is unmistakable: the Columbine High School massacre took place on April 20, 1999.
Authorities said they believe Jasso Ramírez was influenced both by the Columbine attack and by the history of pre-Hispanic human sacrifices at Teotihuacán itself. An American tourist named Jacqueline Gutierrez told the Mexican outlet Milenio that the gunman made his fixation explicit during the attack:
"One of the things he was saying to us was that this is a place for sacrifices, not for your little photos... and that it's the anniversary of the Columbine massacre."
If that account is accurate, the attacker chose both the date and the location deliberately, timing his assault to the anniversary of Columbine while invoking the ancient site's bloody past.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum addressed the attack in a social media post Monday. "What happened today in Teotihuacán deeply pains us. I express my most sincere solidarity with the affected individuals and their families," she wrote.
By Tuesday, her tone had shifted toward policy. "Yesterday's attack highlights the urgent need to strengthen our security protocols," Sheinbaum said.
The National Institute of Anthropology and History announced the Teotihuacán archaeological site would remain closed until further notice. No timeline for reopening was given.
The call to "strengthen security protocols" raises an obvious question: what protocols existed in the first place? A lone gunman walked into one of the most famous tourist sites in the Americas carrying a handgun, a knife, and a bag of ammunition. He had scouted the location multiple times. He stayed in nearby hotels. And he opened fire in broad daylight on a Monday morning with thousands of visitors present.
Six Americans were among those hospitalized. Their names and conditions have not been publicly released. The injured also included tourists from Russia, Brazil, Colombia, the Netherlands, and Canada, a cross-section of the international visitors who flock to Teotihuacán.
The shooting comes amid a broader pattern of violence affecting Americans and other foreign nationals in Mexico. Just weeks earlier, two U.S. Embassy officials and two Mexican agents were killed during a drug lab operation in Chihuahua, a grim reminder of the dangers that extend well beyond tourist zones.
The Teotihuacán attack was not cartel-related, as far as investigators have disclosed. But it lands in a country already convulsed by instability. Sen. Mullin recently warned Americans to cancel Mexico travel plans as cartel violence surged following the killing of drug lord El Mencho.
That violence has trapped Western tourists and disrupted travel across multiple Mexican states. The pyramid shooting, while apparently motivated by a different kind of obsession, adds another data point to a picture that should concern any American planning a trip south of the border.
The broader wave of unrest, including widespread chaos following El Mencho's death, has raised serious questions about the Mexican government's ability to protect civilians, let alone tourists, at even its most iconic landmarks.
Mexican authorities have offered a profile of the gunman and a timeline of the attack, but significant questions remain. No explicit motive has been formally determined beyond the copycat framing. The type of firearm used has not been publicly identified beyond the caliber of ammunition recovered. The names and medical status of the victims, including the Canadian woman killed, have not been released.
It is also unclear how Jasso Ramírez obtained his weapon. Mexico has some of the strictest gun-control laws in the Western Hemisphere. There is one legal gun store in the entire country, operated by the military. Yet a 27-year-old man managed to arm himself, conduct repeated reconnaissance at a major national landmark, and carry out a mass shooting in front of thousands.
The Just The News account confirmed the same core details reported elsewhere: six Americans injured, one Canadian dead, 13 total wounded, and a gunman whose backpack told a disturbing story about his intentions.
President Sheinbaum says Mexico needs to strengthen its security protocols. That much is self-evident. A man walked into one of the most famous sites in the world with a gun, a knife, and a plan, and no one stopped him until he stopped himself.
When the government's response to a mass shooting at its crown-jewel tourist site is a promise to review protocols, American travelers should take that for exactly what it is: an admission that the protocols weren't there to begin with.
