In a neighborhood in Puerto Rico called La Perla, made famous by a popular music video, “Despacito” by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee in 2017, three American tourists were stabbed on February 6.
One of them was filming a hamburger cart and was warned by locals to stop and get out of the area.
It all started at around four in the morning when 39-year-old Carlos Sanchez Brown from South Carolina, started taking videos of a hamburger cart.
Some local residents told him to get lost.
Brown was traveling with Wallace Florence, 37, from South Carolina, and Jackson Tremayne, 38, from Georgia.
According to Municipal Commissioner Jose Juan Garcia, the tourists stayed put and Brown continued videoing.
A man with long white hair hit Wallace Florence in the head.
The three men then decided it was a good idea to leave and started running, but noticed people following them.
As the three men neared a street near the Art and History Museum, a man pulled out a knife and attacked two of the tourists. The assailant stabbed Brown in the arm and Tremayne around six times in his back, arm, chest, and abdomen.
Tremayne and Brown were transported by ambulance to a local hospital, but police said Florence, who had been hit earlier, refused medical attention
So far, no one has been arrested.
The attack is not the first time tourists have been warned not to film in La Perla.
Two years ago, a man named Tariq Quadir Loat, 24, from Wilmington, Delaware, was attacked, killed and burned. The man was filming while buying drugs in the neighborhood and locals warned him to stop. A group of people attacked him and his friend and severely beat them. His companion survived the attack.
La Perla had a reputation at one time as being a drug den and one of the most dangerous slums on the island of Puerto Rico. It was a main heroin distribution center. Crime in the neighborhood significantly dropped after federal agents raided it, but trouble still remains, as the three American tourists found out the hard way.
