MEXICO | Bandits target tourists, but local businesses are victims too

January 7, 2008
BY ELLIOT SPAGAT
PLAYAS DE ROSARITO, Mexico -- Assaults on American tourists have brought hard times to hotels and restaurants that dot Mexican beaches just south of the border from San Diego.

Surfers and kayakers are frightened to hit the waters of the northern stretch of Mexico's Baja California peninsula, long popular as a weekend destination for U.S. tourists.

» Click to enlarge image Omar Armendariz, manager of the El Patio de la Langosta restaurant in Rosarito, Mexico, said business is the worst he's seen in nine years.
(AP)

Americans have long tolerated shakedowns by police. But a handful of attacks since summer by masked, armed bandits -- some of whom used flashing lights to appear like police -- marks a new extreme.

Lori Hoffman, a San Diego-area emergency room nurse, was sexually assaulted Oct. 23 by two masked men in front of her boyfriend, San Diego Surfing Academy owner Pat Weber, who was forced to kneel at gunpoint for 45 minutes.

The men shot out windows of the couple's trailer and forced their way inside, ransacked the cupboards and left with about $7,000 worth of gear.

"No more Mexico,'' said Hoffman, who reported the attack to Mexican police. No arrests have been made.

The Baja California peninsula is known worldwide for clean and sparsely populated beaches, lobster and margaritas and blue waters visited by whales and dolphins.

But news of harrowing assaults on American tourists has begun to overshadow the appeal in the northern part of the peninsula, home to drug gangs and the seedy border city of Tijuana. The comparatively isolated southern tip remains safer and is still popular with Hollywood celebrities.

In late November, as they returned from the Baja 1000 off-road race, a San Diego-area family was pulled over by a car with flashing lights.

Armed men held the family hostage for two hours. They eventually released them but stole the family's truck.

Omar Armendariz, who manages a lobster restaurant, has never seen fewer visitors in his nine years on the job.

''It's dead,'' he said.

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