A Canadian tourist was killed and six others injured after a crazed gunman held a group of people hostage atop a pyramid at the Teotihuacan ruins in Mexico Monday afternoon.

The gunman climbed midway up the Pyramid of the Moon — a nearly 2,000-year-old structure that was once used for ritual human sacrifice — around noon and opened fire on his cowering victims before finally turning the gun on himself, Mexican authorities said.
In total, four people were wounded by gunfire, and two sustained injuries after jumping off the ruins.
The victims were all women and included another Canadian, two Colombians and a Russian.

Videos posted on social media show the gunman, wearing a black mask and a handgun, pacing around the platform as trapped hostages lay face-first on the ground.
One video shared by journalist Ricardo Ospina appears to show the man casually raising his gun and firing at one of the victims.
“I saw the guy that was shooting up on the pyramid and yes, there were a lot of people, he had people as hostages,” witness Laura Torres told media, including N+ Noticias.

“In the short time I saw him let someone go down, a girl, he let her go down. For a moment I thought he was going to shoot her in the back, but no, thank God, he let her go. Then a bit later he let a boy go, but the hostages stayed there,” Torres said.

The Pyramid of the Moon was built between 100 and 450 C.E. — centuries before the Aztec empire — when Teotihuacan was among the largest cities in the ancient world.

The structure lies on the north end of the Street of the Dead, opposite the larger Pyramid of the Sun, and was used for human and animal sacrifices, among other religious ceremonies.

Archeological evidence suggests most of these sacrifices were people captured from other parts of Mesoamerica.