A 45-year old man survived a shooting that took place just outside of the Del Rey Hotel, a major sexual tourism hotspot in Costa Rica.

According to a news report filed by Esteban Mora of daily tabloid Diario Extra, the man was identified by the last name Fonseca. He is reportedly a taxi driver whose workday often includes parking at the Hotel Del Rey and driving prostitutes along with their clients to hotels and nightclubs in and around San Jose.

A Red Cross paramedic who responded to the shooting explained that Mr. Fonseca was hit by gunfire twice in his waist. Witnesses saw two men in a motorcycle drive by while one of them unloaded a semiautomatic pistol aimed at Mr. Fonseca. The gunmen then sped away in a westerly direction. The crime took place at 1:30 am.

It is not clear whether Mr. Fonseca was driving his taxi at the time of the shooting. Police did not release any additional information about this incident.

As previously reported by The Costa Rica Star, the Del Rey Hotel and Casino is ground zero of what sexual tourists call the “Gringo Gulch,” a notorious hotspot of San Jose. The boundaries of the Gulch are loosely defined; they stretch from the district immediately to the east of Chinatown south to Plaza Viquez, north beyond Barrio Amon and all the way west to Paseo Colon.

Within the Gulch, sexual tourists (who are mostly from Canada and the United States) can find bars, massage parlors and love motels that serve as meeting emporiums for working women and their clients. At the Del Rey Hotel, social transactions related to sexual tourism take place at the small casino gaming rooms and the Blue Marlin bar, located on the ground floor next to where the aforementioned shooting took place.