Tijuana municipal police arrested two men on the night of March 17 after they robbed an Oxxo convenience store at gunpoint on Bulevar Simón Bolívar in the Alba Roja neighborhood. Officers recovered a pistol and 750 pesos ($42 USD) in stolen cash within minutes of the holdup.
Gunpoint Robbery and Quick Pursuit
The suspects, identified as Jesús Ezequiel, 24, and Jesús Apolinar, 22, both originally from the state of Guerrero, allegedly entered the Oxxo store that evening. One of the men pointed a pistol at the cashier and demanded the register be opened, police said. After taking the cash, both men fled on foot.
Responding officers tracked the pair several blocks from the store. Police recovered the stolen 750 pesos and the weapon used in the robbery. Both men were detained and turned over to investigators.
Pattern of Oxxo Robberies in Tijuana
Authorities suspect the two men are connected to multiple other Oxxo robberies in the same area of Tijuana. The arrest fits a persistent pattern in the city: Oxxo stores, which are open late and handle cash transactions, remain frequent targets for armed robbery.
State security data from Baja California’s SSPCM (the municipal public safety agency) recorded 1,796 business robberies in Tijuana during 2024, with 982 of those involving violence. Oxxo, Mexico’s largest convenience store chain with hundreds of locations across Tijuana, accounts for a significant share of those incidents. In September 2025, police arrested a 35-year-old man known as “El Mini Ruco” who was linked to at least 17 Oxxo holdups. Just days later, two more suspects were detained in connection with 26 separate Oxxo robberies across the city.
Alba Roja sits in Tijuana’s eastern urban sprawl, an area with heavy commercial traffic along Bulevar Simón Bolívar. The boulevard connects several working-class neighborhoods and is lined with convenience stores, pharmacies, and small businesses that stay open into the late evening hours.
Both suspects now face state charges for armed robbery. Investigators at the FGE (Baja California’s state attorney general’s office) are working to determine whether the men can be linked to other unsolved convenience store holdups in the area, as reported by Punto Norte.