As we published in The Cancun Post last week, an American tourist named Dusta Jackson was mugged and left for dead in Cancun.
Mexico’s Yucatan beaches provide a scenic backdrop for an ugly reality of kidnappings, gun violence, and other crimes, with U.S. officials warning American travelers to be on their toes as they hit the sand.
The attorney general in Mexico’s waterfront Quintana Roo state announced an investigation last week into an alleged kidnapping and machete attack against a Utah dad visiting Cancun with his wife for Valentine’s Day.
Dustan Jackson, a 36-year-old contractor from Salt Lake City, told Fox News Digital on Thursday that he wanted to pick up some chewing tobacco before his flight home from Cancun and called a cab. As a result, he said, he spent months in and out of the hospital, underwent multiple surgeries, and suffered permanent nerve damage in his left arm.
He said the driver pulled up to a grocery store around 10 a.m. on Feb. 12, and he got out to get a tin. Then: “Bam!”
He blacked out and woke up after sundown, he said, with broken front teeth, a welt on his head, and machete wounds up and down the left side of his body. The attackers took his cell phone and credit card, and he spent hours bleeding and looking for help before he said a police officer bandaged him up and drove him to the airport.
Jackson said he was not sure why the officer drove him to the airport instead of a hospital.
“She put a few bandages on me; why didn’t she take me to the hospital, I don’t know,” he said. “Some of the horror stories I’ve heard, I’m glad that [she] didn’t because I could have been stuck down there. Who knows?”
Once at the airport, he begged strangers for help until someone who spoke English called his wife for him and helped set him up in a hotel overnight and arrange a trip back to the U.S.
Police in Cancun’s tourist district and at the airport separately told Fox News Digital they had no record of the attack or of interactions with Jackson, but prosecutors confirmed last week they were launching an investigation. A State Department official also said the U.S. government was aware of the allegations and prepared to assist.
Source: Novedades Quintana Roo
