A team of gunmen burst into a private party in Cancun, fatally shooting five victims including an off-duty police investigator and injuring another. The incident is the latest chapter of record-breaking violence in the popular tourist resort town.

The attack took place over the weekend at a business next to a seafood restaurant where various state police officers and local fishermen were dining. Information released by state authorities revealed that a team of gunmen carrying AR-15 rifles burst into the business, spraying gunfire and killing state investigator agent Juan Carlos Morales Lopez and four restaurant employees. State officials claim that the attack took place at a private event with no tourists involved.

The multiple homicides in the once peaceful resort town come soon after the online news outlet Semanario Playa News shut down operation following the murder of their news director and a reporter. As Breitbart Texas reported, last week, unknown gunmen killed Ruben Pat Cahuich at a bar in Playa Del Carmen; the death marked the 11th journalist killed in Mexico in 2018. Pat was the founder and director of the online publication. He was previously threatened, arrested, and assaulted after reporting on the ties of a local police chief and drug cartels. Pat’s murder took place 26 days after one of his reporters, Jose Guadalupe Chan Dzib, was gunned down. The late reporter was a police officer before covering organized crime. He received threats before his murder.

Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by Tony Aranda from Nuevo Leon and “J.M. Martinez” from Coahuila.