An American tourist has been killed in an apparent robbery attempt after leaving his hotel in Medellin, Colombia.
John Mariani, a 65-year old New Yorker was shot in the head during a botched robbery attempt in the El Poblado neighbourhood.
"When a foreign national got out of the taxi he was travelling in, he was approached by a suspect who tried to rob his belongings. When the man resisted, sadly, he was killed," Medellin police colonel John Rodriguez said.
Police have offered a $16,000 reward for information leading to the capture of the gunmen.
El Poblado is one of Medellin’s most upmarket districts with numerous hotels, shopping malls restaurants and bars.
The incident will be a blow to the reputation of Medellin, the country’s second biggest city, which has seen a tourism boom in recent years.
The city had cleaned up its act since the 1990s when it had the unwanted tag as being among the most violent cities in the world as the headquarters of Pablo Escobar’s drug cartel.
Just a week earlier Medellin was host of the 21st general assembly of the United Nations World Tourism Organization, with Colombia’s tourism minister Cecilia Alvarez-Correa Glen touting the city’s improving safety for its tourism renaissance.
