Stray bullet kills 10-year-old Mexican boy in packed theater

MEXICO CITY, Mexico (UPDATED) – Authorities said Tuesday, November 13, that a 10-year-old boy who was mysteriously shot dead in a packed Mexico City movie theater was killed by a stray bullet that came from outside.

The shooting during a screening of the animated Disney movie “Wreck-It Ralph” took place on November 2 in the crime-infested Iztapalapa borough, but the city prosecutor’s office only made it public late Monday.

Investigators at first believed the shot had come from inside the theater, even though the boy’s father and the cinema chain Cinepolis said that nobody had heard a gunshot or seen any muzzle flash.

But the prosecutor’s office said Tuesday that two holes were discovered in the theater’s ceiling along with a 9mm slug on the floor, the same caliber as the bullet found in the boy’s head.

“We can rule out that the projectile that hit the minor was fired inside the theater. The shot was fired from outside the shopping center,” deputy prosecutor Edmundo Porfirio Garrido told a news conference.

He said authorities were looking for witnesses who may have seen the shooter. The movie complex was sealed off Tuesday while authorities asked for security camera footage and interrogated employees.

The boy’s father, Enrique Cuacuas, told local radio earlier that he felt something “whiz” by his ear and then saw his son Hendrick convulsing around 15 minutes after the movie started.

An expert at first suggested that the shot had come from a meter (yard) in front of the boy.

But crime scene investigation director Anselmo Apodaca said the bullet hit the Hendrick on top of the head, indicating that the shot came from above.

Garrido rushed his son to a hospital, but Hendrick died from his wound two days later.

The legal director for the Cinepolis theater chain, Pablo Jimenez, said the company was “dismayed and worried” about the boy’s death, which followed another “inexplicable” incident in March in which a person was wounded in the foot. – Agence France-Presse