Denver woman died during shooting at Mexico music festival

DENVER – A Denver woman is among five people who died during a shooting at a Caribbean resort town, her brother said Tuesday.

Robert Aaron Martinez told KMGH-TV that his sister, Alejandra Villanueva Ibarra, 18, died while attending an electronic music festival in Playa del Carmen, Mexico early Monday morning.

“She was very lovable. Very artistic. She loved art,” Martinez told the television station.

Miguel Angel Pech, attorney general for the Quintana Roo state, said the shooting happened at The BPM Festival after security personnel tried to stop a man with a gun from entering a nightclub. The other four people who were shot and killed at the club were not Americans, and three of them were part of the festival’s security detail, he said.

Martinez said his sister was excited to attend the festival, which brings people from across the world to the beach resort on the Yucatan Peninsula.

“The night before she left she was at my house, and we were having dinner and we were talking about how she was going to come back and she was going to tell me about her trip and everything she did over there,” he said. “I didn’t know it was going to be the last time I would see her.”

He said Villanueva was in college and working to provide for her ill mother and younger siblings.

“We’re just trying to figure out how we’re going to bring my sister back,” he said. “We just want to say the last goodbye and see her for the last time.”

Mexican authorities said Tuesday they are looking into whether extortion, street-level drug sales or a murder plot was the motive behind the shooting. Fifteen people were injured.