By Wendy Anders

A lazy afternoon at the Sunset Beach Bar in Cieneguita, Limón turned into a deadly scene just after 4 p.m. Sunday.

According to police reports, two hooded men approached the bar on a motorcycle at 4:15, one with a 9mm revolver and one with an AK47, and shot a young man who was standing alongside a yellow Mitsubishi car parked in front of the bar near the crowded beach.

Francisco Miralles Montoya, 21, was the first victim gunned down. Then when the car owner, Tony Peña Alexander Russell, 28, approached the scene, he was also shot and wounded. Russell was taken to Limón’s Tony Facio Hospital where he remains in police custody, said police sources.

Four other bystanders were killed on the scene of the shootout which occurred in the open where a large crowd was gathered for socializing. These include three women identified as Stephanie Camacho,15; Eloísa Hoy Pinnock, 33; and Corina Mc Kenzie Pennicott, 38; and a young man with a criminal record for drug possession and assault.

The sixth victim in the shooting, an 11-year-old boy, also a bystander, by the last name of Esna, died this morning of gunshots to the neck at San José’s National Children Hospital, reported Costa Rica’s Spanish daily La Nación.

Walter Espinoza, director of the Judicial Investigative Agency (OIJ), said in a press conference that it is still too early to know much about the rival groups he feels are responsible for the act, but added that the shootout was most likely motivated by a settling of scores by criminal organizations linked to drug trafficking.

In public statements yesterday in reaction to the tragedy, Costa Rica’s Security Minister Gustavo Mata pleaded with the country’s legislators to approve a much-needed funding source to increase police recruits and enhance criminal investigations. In an emotive plea he said, “Three innocent women, and two innocent children dead, this can not happen in this country!”

Mata went on to say that police had just recently patrolled the Sunset Bar which is on their radar as a site for constant monitoring, and that the shootout was an unpredictable occurrence. However, he said an intensive police operative in Limón is needed to reclaim the city streets for the “good people of Limón,” and to show the “narcos that it is not their territory.”

He siphoned 100 officers off of other patrols, mainly San José’s, to set up check-points and other police operatives in Limón as of yesterday. The special operation is similar to one set up in San José’s southern districts last October which resulted in a decrease in homicides and crime, said Mata.

However, he noted that he does not have enough personnel to do the job. Saying he had predicted an increase in drug-related violence such as this Sunday’s scene with cocaine shipments from South America via Costa Rica and Central America increasing markedly over the past 1-2 years, and marijuana from Jamaica also making its effects felt in an growing Costa Rican market and greater trans-shipments to the U.S., said Mata.

Costa Rica’s current total police force of 11,300 is insufficient, and should be raised to 18,000 to provide adequate security for the country’s population, said Mata. Funds for the increase in police would be available from the resumption of an annual tax on corporations which is pending legislative debate and voting, said Mata.

Mata concluded his public address by saying he had decided that if the new funding source from the corporate tax is not approved within 30 days, he would submit his resignation to the President.

The OIJ said Tuesday they are intensively investigating the case and conducting interviews in the area, but have not yet identified the masked gunmen responsible for Sunday’s shooting. The evidence collected at the crime scene included the car which had 60 bullet holes, and evidence of at least 90 bullet impacts around the site.