ACAPULCO, Mexico – It was a shootout straight from Hollywood in the former playground of its biggest stars: Masked and heavily armed Mexican soldiers battled outlaws holed up in a cliffside mansion in a four-hour shootout that had tourists cowering in hotels nearby.
Roughly 3,000 shots flew, and 50 grenades exploded during the raucous gunbattle late Saturday that killed 15 gunmen and one soldier. Six other people were wounded, including three bystanders.
More than a dozen tourists were evacuated from a neighboring hotel strip frozen in the 1950s, when Elizabeth Taylor held one of her many weddings in Acapulco and John Wayne and "Tarzan" star Johnny Weissmuller threw lavish parties at Los Flamingos Hotel less than 100 yards (meters) from where gunfire broke out.
Shootout in Acapulco
