Carl Blea, left, and his husband Marc Lange were holding hands while walking in Puerto Vallarta when Blea was shot in what the two men say was a hate crime.
Palm Springs real estate agent Carl Blea was injured Saturday night, March 24, in an apparently hate-motivated shooting in Puerto Vallarta. Blea was shot once in the back of his leg, and the bullet exited his thigh.
In a post on his Facebook, and later reported on Towleroad, Marc Lange said he and Blea, his husband, were “walking home hand-in-hand, from an evening out in Puerto Vallarta,” when the shooting occurred. He said the two were walking into Cardenas Lazaro Park, “a well-lit area,” when the walked past a man in a car. As they passed by, the man shouted something at them.
Lange said he turned to look at the man, then turned away, but that Blea saw the man pull out a gun and point it at them.
“Carl begins to run and pulls me away from the shooter. A bullet is shot and Carl goes down. Shot. We have no idea what is happening,” Lange wrote on Facebook. By that time, he added, they had managed to get on the other side of a building, out of the shooter’s line of sight. “I scream for help …. Someone finally helps, police arrive, 45 minutes later the ambulance arrives,” he said.
Lange said he was posting about the incident on Facebook because he believes officials there were trying to downplay the attack to avoid hurting the city’s lucrative tourism industry. Puerto Vallarta is a popular vacation destination for gay men.
A local news report mentioned a robbery attempt and struggles between the gunman and the couple, but Lange said that is not an accurate description of what happened. He said neither he nor Blea ever said anything to the gunman.
“This was not a robbery went bad,” he wrote on Facebook. “It was a hate crime as Carl Blea and I were walking hand in hand. We never spoke to the man who shot us. He yelled at us and then pulled out a gun and shot at us … . We told 3 different set of police officials the same story. There were no witnesses, the street was empty.”
As an American who owns a condo not too far from where you were shot I am horrified. I am so glad you survived the attack and please know we hold you in our thoughts and prayers. I love Vallarta but this should be a wake up to many of us gays that forget we are in a foreign country and we are not loved by all for who we are.