A taxi driver was found shot dead inside his cab on the Tulum-Cobá highway

A taxi driver was shot to death in the early hours of Saturday on the Tulum-Cobá state highway and was found inside the cab he had been driving. No one has been arrested.

The attack happened at kilometer 12.5, near the Los Árboles subdivision, on a unit carrying economic number 1126. Several gunshots were heard along that stretch before emergency and security units were called to the scene.

The killing lands five weeks after federal officials presented Tulum as one of the clearest security turnarounds in the country, and less than a month after another fatal shooting in the center of town.

What officers found at kilometer 12.5

Officers who reached the highway found the driver already dead inside the taxi. They secured and cordoned off the area to prevent possible evidence from being disturbed, and the response drew a heavy deployment to a road linking Tulum with the Cobá archaeological site and the inland communities where much of the local workforce lives.

Forensic experts and investigators from the Fiscalía General del Estado de Quintana Roo processed the scene and collected evidence tied to the attack. The body was removed and taken to the Servicio Médico Forense.

Prosecutors have not named a motive or a suspect

The state prosecutor's office opened an investigation into how the attack occurred, what the motive was, and who took part. By Sunday, the office had not released the driver's name and had reported no detentions.

Investigators have also not said whether the gunmen followed the taxi or waited for it along the route.

Authorities have not stated how many attackers took part or what type of weapon was used. They have also not said whether the taxi was carrying a passenger.

Drivers from Tiburones del Caribe have been killed before

Initial reports place unit 1126 with the Tiburones del Caribe union, the largest taxi organization operating in Tulum. That affiliation does not appear in official statements on the case.

Drivers from that union have been killed before, and recently. In July 2025, a Tiburones del Caribe driver identified only as Gilberto, at the wheel of unit 798, was shot twice in the head outside the Taboo beach club in the middle of the hotel zone, in front of tourists, in what local outlets counted as the 32nd homicide recorded in Tulum that year.

Ten months earlier, in September 2024, another driver from the same union was shot dead on Federal Highway 307 near Felipe Carrillo Puerto, and his taxi was set on fire. He was the third Tiburones del Caribe driver killed that single month.

The settings differ sharply. The 2025 killing happened in daylight on the coast, in front of tourists. Saturday's happened in the dark, twelve kilometers inland, on a road with no beach clubs on it.

Sagrero's homicide case is still open

The union's own leadership has been involved in a homicide case since 2024. State prosecutors arrested Eliazar Sagrero Ordóñez, the head of Tiburones del Caribe and at the time a councilman-elect in Tulum, on August 29, 2024, on charges of aggravated homicide and attempted homicide. Local reporting linked the accusation to the killing of four people. A firearm was seized during the operation.

Taxi drivers responded by blocking Federal Highway 307 near the archaeological zone, arguing that the arrest was political and tied to recent fare adjustments and to competition from Uber and DiDi. Sagrero was released on September 5, 2024, but he was bound over for trial and remained under house arrest with an electronic monitor.

The pattern is not confined to Tulum. In November 2024, a raid on the facilities of Cancún's Andrés Quintana Roo union turned up drugs, ammunition, and indications that people had been tortured on the premises, and its leadership was accused in the killings of three taxi drivers. Prosecutors have established no link between any union dispute and Saturday's shooting.

Zero homicides in June, a Tulum taxi driver killed in August

On July 17, 2026, at the presidential morning briefing, President Claudia Sheinbaum, security cabinet head Omar García Harfuch, and Marcela Figueroa Franco of the National Public Security System presented Quintana Roo as a national success case. Homicides in the state had fallen 85 percent between September 2024 and June 2026, from a daily average of 2 to 0.3. The first half of 2026 ran 60 percent below the same period of 2025, the lowest level since 2017.

Tulum was cited by name. The municipality recorded zero homicides in June 2026, its second consecutive month without a case.

Ten days after that briefing, on the early morning of July 27, gunmen intercepted two people on Avenida Tulum, between Beta and Andrómeda Sur streets in the town center, killing a man and wounding a woman in the leg. Both were reported to be employees of a nearby nightclub. No arrests were announced in that case either.

Saturday's shooting moved the violence out of the center and onto a highway that thousands of Tulum residents drive to get to work.

The Fiscalía has not said when it expects to release the driver's name. Until it does, the man found in unit 1126 will be counted in Quintana Roo's August count without one.

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