Po­lice de­tained a man on sus­pi­cion of killing an 11-year-old boy and neigh­bors wrecked his home Mon­day amid anger over es­ca­lat­ing drug vi­o­lence in the Ar­gen­tine city of Rosario, where a threat was di­rect­ed at soc­cer su­per­star Li­onel Mes­si last week.

Máx­i­mo Jerez was killed ear­ly Sun­day when at least one gun­men at­tacked a birth­day par­ty. Three oth­er chil­dren, in­clud­ing a 2-year-old, were in­jured.

Hours af­ter Máx­i­mo was buried Mon­day, peo­ple in the north­ern Rosario neigh­bor­hood where the al­leged shoot­er lived at­tacked his home.

Lo­cal news chan­nels car­ried live im­ages of peo­ple set­ting fires and throw­ing rocks at the home of the sus­pect, who at one point had a gun in his hand and ap­peared to fire it.

Po­lice de­tained the man and then had to pre­vent peo­ple from at­tack­ing him. Once the sus­pect was tak­en away, neigh­bors de­stroyed his home and stole his be­long­ings.

“We don’t want an­oth­er Máx­i­mo in the neigh­bor­hood, we’re so tired of every­thing, tired that they rob us and that our chil­dren die,” An­to­nia Jerez, the boy’s aunt, told lo­cal news me­dia. “My nephew is no longer here, they killed him and the whole neigh­bor­hood is in mourn­ing, an­gry.”

Peo­ple de­stroyed at least 3 hous­es in the area they claimed were used by drug deal­ers.

The killing was the lat­est dra­mat­ic turn for a city where drug-re­lat­ed killings have be­come com­mon with a lev­el of vi­o­lence that is rare for Ar­genti­na.

Adrián Spelta, the pros­e­cu­tor in charge of in­ves­ti­gat­ing the case, told lo­cal news me­dia that the killing had to do with a turf war be­tween ri­val drug gangs.

“Cer­tain lim­its that used to ex­ist have been crossed,” Spelta said, not­ing that in oth­er oc­ca­sions “the pres­ence of mi­nors” would have led gang mem­bers to “sus­pend any kind of vi­o­lent at­tack.”

The trou­bles in Rosario re­ceived in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion when gun­men threat­ened Mes­si in a writ­ten mes­sage left Thurs­day af­ter they fired at a su­per­mar­ket owned by his in-laws. No­body was in­jured in the ear­ly morn­ing at­tack.

BUENOS AIRES, Ar­genti­na (AP)