4 Die In Mexico City Shooting In Tough Neighborhood Of Tepito

Four people were killed after two gunmen opened fire in a gym in the Mexico City neighborhood of Tepito, a famously tough area which recently came under the international gaze after 12 young people from there were kidnapped from an after-hours bar. The attack reportedly targeted three men -- two of them brothers -- who were working out in the gym Body Extreme, but when the owner tried to intervene, he was also shot and killed by the gunmen, according to Mexico City Mayor Miguel Ángel Mancera.

Two people were later arrested. They reportedly shot at police who attempted to apprehend them, although they did not manage to hit them.

"It was a direct attack. There were about 30 people at this place," said Mancera. The mayor would not speculate as to whether or not the murders were linked to the earlier kidnapping of the 12 youths from a Zona Rosa bar. The shooting reportedly provoked a huge police operation in which helicopters swept the streets of the city center in search of the suspects.

On Thursday, Proceso.com reported that one of the owners of the bar Heaven, Mario Alberto Ledesma Rodríguez, turned himself in to police after his wife Brenda Angélica Casas Figueroa was detained three days earlier. Another bar employee, Gabriel Carrasco Ilizarriturri El Diablo, who was detained on Wednesday, told police that the other three owners of the bar -- brothers Marcos and Dash Ledesma Moschino and Ernesto Espinosa Lobo -- had planned the kidnapping of the Tepito youths because of a dispute with a brother of a drug trafficker.

"Several people were going to arrive to carry off those from Tepito, for which Carrasco left the bar at approximately 8:00 and returned when the 'pickup' was occurring," Proceso.com quoted the police record as saying.

"We are going after those who carried out these attacks, those who have sought to cause unrest in Tepito," Mancera said, according to the Washington Post. There is still no sign of the 12 youths.

Tepito is home to a huge informal market, with about 20,000 regular vendors setting up shop beneath a canopy of tarps near Mexico City's historical center. Trade in stolen electronics is brisk; so is the drug trade. Products have long come from California and other parts of the southwestern U.S., but as traffic across the border has grown riskier, Korean and Chinese immigrants to Tepito have found a niche as wholesalers for other area vendors. The most enterprising among Tepito informal merchants have even been known to design their own products made in China, with unique logos and branding, according to the Wilson Center.