21/04/2026 – 18:30 GMT+2
Security officials said that the shooting at the world-famous Teotihuacan pyramids that left one person dead and 13 others wounded “wasn’t spontaneous.”
Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum called for tighter gun controls at tourist sites on Tuesday following a deadly shooting at the Teotihuacan pyramids just weeks before World Cup games are hosted in the country.
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“Evidently, we need to tighten security,” Sheinbaum said in reference to Monday’s shooting.
“We need to have better security to make sure someone can’t enter an archaeological site, a tourist site, with a firearm,” the president said in her morning press conference in Mexico City, which is set to host World Cup football matches in June.
Meanwhile, security officials said that the shooting at the world-famous Teotihuacan pyramids that left one person dead and 13 others wounded “wasn’t spontaneous.”
The shooter, identified as 27-year-old Julio Cesar Jasso Ramirez, “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,” Mexico State Prosecutor Jose Luis Cervantes Martinez told reporters.
Video and photos circulating in local media in Mexico showed a man standing with a gun on top of a pyramid while people ducked for cover. A number of gunshots rang out in the videos.
The shooting took place shortly after 11:30 am local time when dozens of tourists were at the top of the Pyramid of the Moon.
“Some people, because they were scared … threw themselves face down on the ground, and the rest of us started to go down,” the guide said, recounting how the shooter, upon seeing the tourists descending the pyramid’s steps, began firing.
“There were thousands of people there and there were a lot of gunshots that just kept coming,” said Brenda Lee, a Canadian tourist.
She added that the scene quickly turned chaotic as people tried to escape.
Those taken to hospitals for treatment included six US citizens, three Colombians, two Brazilians, one Russian and one Canadian, the local government said. The youngest person who was injured in the shooting was six, while the oldest was 61.
Officials later detailed that the shooter had died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, adding that they found a gun, knife and ammunition on his person upon searching his belongings after his death.
The Teotihuacan pyramids, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, are a series of massive structures on the outskirts of Mexico City built by three different ancient civilisations.
As one of Mexico’s most important tourist destinations, the site draws more than 1.8 million international visitors a year, according to the latest government figures.
