RETALHULEU, Guatemala - Men with automatic weapons hijacked a bus carrying 13 American tourists in southwestern Guatemala on Wednesday, killing one passenger, police said.
The Americans, all Mormons from Ogden and Salt Lake City, Utah, left the mountain city of Quetzaltenango and were heading for the Mexican border when their bus was intercepted by five men in a pickup near Colomba, 125 miles southwest of the capital, Guatemala City.
The gunmen forced the tour bus off the road and climbed aboard, said Jose Boch, a spokesman for police in the city of Retalhuleu, 25 miles from the scene of the attack.
A 52-year-old man from Ogden, Utah, received a fatal gunshot wound to the chest. Boch identified him as Brett Richard, but a person who answered the phone at the victim's home in the United States said his name was Brett Richards.
The Guatemalan driver of the bus, Filiberto Roca, was struck in the right ankle. There were no
other reports of injury.
The assailants robbed everyone on the bus, then sped away, Boch said. They remained at large late Wednesday night.
Police rushed Richard by ambulance to a Retalhuleu hospital but he died enroute, Boch said.
He said the group arrived in Guatemala on vacation and was not participating in any religious mission.
The remaining tourists were taken to a Mormon center in Retalhuleu before being transferred to the home of a local Mormon leader.
The survivors could be seen sitting together and talking quietly in a large room at the home, but they appeared traumatized by the attack and declined to answer a reporter's questions about it.
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The Associated Press
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Brett Richard, 52, from Ogden, Utah, lies dead in the morgue of Retalhuleu, 125 miles southwest of Guatemala City, Guatemala. Richard was fatally shot when men with automatic weapons hijacked a bus carrying 13 American tourists, all of whom were Mormons f
