“It’s an attack plane,” said one of the young children of David Tellez, who watched a Mexican military plane touch down with his Aeromexico passenger plane early Thursday.
Then the bullets started firing.
“As we were accelerating to take off, we heard gunshots very close to the plane and then we all fell to the ground,” Tellez said after the incident in the northern city of Culiacan.
Violence erupted in Culiacan on Thursday following the arrest of Ovidio Guzmán, the son of the infamous drug lord known as El Chapo and a senior member of the Sinaloa Cartel.
Aeromexico said no one was hurt on the Téllez flight. The Culiacan airport was closed shortly afterwards, as security forces patrolled the city, which was filled with burnt-out vehicles, attempting to prevent a violent reaction.
Tellez, 42, was traveling with his wife and children, ages 7, 4 and 1, after spending Christmas with family.
He told Reuters that he had made it to the airport for his 8:24 a.m. flight without incident, despite encountering road blockades after an overnight shootout. Although Guzmán’s arrest was not yet confirmed, nervous security guards urged passengers to enter quickly.
