The former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) husband of an American woman shot and killed at a Mexican resort earlier this month told Fox News Digital that she began spending more time out of her native Los Angeles over crime concerns plaguing the California city – only to die at the hands of cartel crossfire. 

Niko Honarbakhsh, a Los Angeles native who garnered more than 120,000 followers documenting her life and travels on Instagram, was shot and killed on Feb. 9 at the Mia Beach Club in Tulum, a popular tourist destination for Americans, as bullets whizzed between two suspected drug dealers, according to Mexican authorities. 

Her husband of almost 15 years, Karl Perman, a former DEA agent who also worked in law enforcement around Chicago and Detroit, told Fox News Digital last week that the two of them split their time between their home in Beverly Hills, California, and their condominium in Cancun, Mexico, over the past five years. Now, he’s planning a funeral. 

After meeting through a friend in Chicago, the couple built a life together with their two beloved dogs, Skylar and Coco, outside where Honarbakhsh grew up in Los Angeles. But recently, Honarbakhsh felt unsafe in her hometown with crime and homelessness plaguing Los Angeles, especially since Perman often travels for his current work in the private energy sector. 

“Basically, I guess there was an alleged drug dealer that came in and saw another drug dealer and then shot that drug dealer like up by the restaurant, and then that person was just injured. So he ran to get away from the other person. And as he ran out to the beach, the other person ran chasing him and shooting, but obviously not very good gun control as you’re running and shooting it. So the rounds, you know, one went all over and two of them hit Niko,” he said. 

The AG’s Office said in a statement on Sunday that a taxi driver had been arrested for allegedly driving three people to the crime scene in Tulum – a beachside restaurant – to carry out the shootings. Those three people were responsible for the gunfire that killed Honarbakhsh, authorities said, but the shooters have not yet been captured.

According to Perman’s account, when he returned to the club the next day, the manager “did not ask me to leave, but he welcomed me to leave,” describing the man as standoffish and claiming that no one working the day before was around to speak with him about what happened amid the “chaos.” 

Niko Honarbakhsh and Karl Perman’s dogs sit together in the bathtub. (Karl Perman/Fox News Digital)

“Do you understand who I am? I’m like, it’s my wife. Like, you know, I would really appreciate some details,” Perman recalled of the exchange. “He actually said that he wasn’t happy about things because the government told him that he had to shut down a portion of his club, and it was taped off. So I told him, as far as I’m concerned, you shouldn’t be open at all.”

Mia Beach Club could not immediately be reached for comment.

Afterward, Perman said he spent hours at the homicide investigators’ office, demanding he be allowed to identify his wife’s body. 

“I mean, I said, how do I confirm a body? They wouldn’t show me anything. They wouldn’t show me pictures. They wouldn’t show me the body, they wouldn’t show me anything. And I’m like, well, how do I even know that this is her?” he said. Eventually, authorities showed Perman the body that evening, and he confirmed that it was his wife. 

He credited the U.S. government – specifically the DEA and the State Department – for helping facilitate another meeting with Mexican prosecutors after initially spending hours at the state attorney general’s office refuting their claims she was photographed with one of the suspected drug dealers. It was at that meeting, with head commanders of Tulum police and prosecutors, that Perman said Mexican authorities reevaluated the photo and admitted the woman in the image was not Honarbakhsh. 

Perman said Mexican authorities eventually apologized.