A young woman in New Mexico was fatally shot while playing Pokemon Go over the weekend, after she witnessed what police say was an armed robbery in progress.
Cayla Campos, 21, and her boyfriend Sidney, were hunting Pokemon in their car in Albuquerque late Friday when they pulled up beside a robbery in progress in the city’s Bianchetti Park, according to police. Two men were holding up another man when they spotted Campos and opened fire on her vehicle.
Campos tried to drive away but she was struck by a bullet and crashed the car into a house, police told local station KOAT. She died of her injuries in hospital.
“We lost our baby Cayla last night to a shooting,” Campos’ father, Carl, wrote in a Facebook post on Saturday. “She was murdered in cold blood.”
More than 100 people have left messages of sympathy on his post.
Campos’ father described her as a “very special person,” adding: “I don’t know how to live without you.”
Campos’ friend, Cody Bell, said he was in disbelief.
“She has helped me through everything, and she has always been there,” Bell told local station KRQE.
“I am really trying hard not to break down right now,” he said. “I feel like there is a piece of me that is missing now.”
He said Pokemon Go was part of Campos’ late-night routine with her boyfriend.
“Her and her boyfriend always make a loop around this park before they go home and play Pokemon Go because their apartment is literally right there,” he said.
The Albuquerque Police Department is still looking for the suspect shooters, who are thought to have used a silver four-door sedan and a red car that might have been a Ford Mustang.
Mary Light, who lives near the house that was damaged, says she has provided police with surveillance footage of the incident.
“It’s scary,” she told KRQE. “Even in a nice, quiet family neighbourhood like this, there will be dangers and violence happening all the time.”
Several users in an Albuquerque Pokemon Go Facebook group shared the story as a cautionary tale over the weekend.
“Playing PoGo in a park late at night is something we all have done,” user Roberto Gonzales wrote. “This could have been any of us.”
Pokemon Go has been involved in several accidental deaths since it was released, but Bell says he doesn’t blame the game for what happened to Campos. She was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Comments