At a conference last week, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico’s president since 2018, said, “We are not going to act as policemen for any foreign government,” as quoted by the Associated Press. “Mexico First. Our home comes first.”

As the Associated Press noted, López Obrador has, in previous years, “laid out various justifications for his ‘hugs, not bullets’ policy of avoiding clashes with the cartels.” 

“In the past he has said ‘you cannot fight violence with violence,’ and on other occasions he has argued the government has to address ‘the causes’ of drug cartel violence, ascribing them to poverty or a lack of opportunities,” the AP reported, adding that “López Obrador’s view — like many of his policies — harkens back to the 1970s, a period when many officials believed that Mexican cartels selling drugs to gringos was a U.S. issue, not a Mexican one.”

On Friday, the president “basically argued that drugs were a U.S. problem, not a Mexican one,” and he “offered to help limit the flow of drugs into the United States, but only, he said, on humanitarian grounds,” according to the Associated Press.

“Of course we are going to cooperate in fighting drugs, above all because it has become a very sensitive, very sad humanitarian issue, because a lot of young people are dying in the United States because of fentanyl,” the president said. Over 70,000 Americans die annually because of synthetic opioids like fentanyl, which are mainly made in Mexico from precursor chemicals smuggled in from China,” López Obrador said.

In February, The New York Times reported that United States “law enforcement officials spent years looking into allegations that allies of” López Obrador “met with and took millions of dollars from drug cartels after he took office.”

The Times, citing U.S. records and three people familiar with the matter, said that the previously unreported inquiry “uncovered information pointing to potential links between powerful cartel operatives and Mexican advisers and officials close to the president while he governed the country.”

“But the United States never opened a formal investigation into Mr. López Obrador, and the officials involved ultimately shelved the inquiry. They concluded that the U.S. government had little appetite to pursue allegations against the leader of one of America’s top allies, said the three people familiar with the case, who were not authorized to speak publicly,” the Times reported at the time.

More from the Times’ report at the time:

“Much of the information collected by U.S. officials came from informants whose accounts can be difficult to corroborate and sometimes end up being incorrect. The investigators obtained the information while looking into the activities of drug cartels, and it was not clear how much of what the informants told them was independently confirmed. For example, records show that the investigators were told by an informant that one of Mr. López Obrador’s closest confidants met with Ismael Zambada García, a top leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel, before his victory in the 2018 presidential election. A different source told them that after the president was elected, a founder of the notoriously violent Zetas cartel paid $4 million to two of Mr. López Obrador’s allies in the hope of being released from prison. Investigators obtained information from a third source suggesting that drug cartels were in possession of videos of the president’s sons picking up drug money, records show.”

López Obrador, responding to The New York Times’ reporting, vehemently denied the allegations and called on the United States to clear up the matter.

“It’s all completely false,” López Obrador said in February. “The U.S. government is going to have to address this.”

He even suggested that the report could damage Mexico’s relationship with the U.S.

“Does this diminish the trust the Mexican government has in the United States?” Mr. López Obrador said, as quoted by the Times. “Time will tell.”

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice said there was no investigation into the Mexican president at the time.

The Associated Press, in its report on Lopez Obrador’s latest comments, has a rundown on his relatively lax view toward the cartels:

“López Obrador has argued before against ‘demonizing’ the drug cartels, and has encouraged leaders of the Catholic church to try to negotiate peace pacts between warring gangs. Explaining why he has ordered the army not to attack cartel gunmen, López Obrador said in 2022 ‘we also take care of the lives of the gang members, they are human beings.’ He has also sometimes appeared not to take the violence issue seriously. In June 2023, he said of one drug gang that had abducted 14 police officers: ‘I’m going to tell on you to your fathers and grandfathers,’ suggesting they should get a good spanking. Asked about those comments at the time, residents of one town in the western Mexico state of Michoacan who have lived under drug cartel control for years reacted with disgust and disbelief.”

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The DEA issued a letter Monday directed at online retailers selling pill presses, informing them that they are required to report sales of these presses to the DEA.

According to the DEA, pill presses are commonly used to disguise the deadly opioid fentanyl by replicating existing prescription medications. These replicated pills are then sold to people who are typically unaware they’re buying fentanyl. These pill presses are incredibly easy to find online and sell for as little as 40 dollars. This, in part, has fueled a scourge of overdoses in the last several years, 110,757 in 2022 alone by the DEA’s count.

“With these tools, criminal actors are able to produce pills that look like legitimate prescription medication—like oxycodone, Xanax, and Adderall—but are not,” the DEA said. “Those pills actually contain fentanyl and other deadly drugs.  Criminals then sell those pills on social media and in our communities, often to people who do not know that the pills are not real or that they contain deadly drugs.”

The DEA implicitly stated that pursuant to the Controlled Substances Act, e-commerce retailers responsible for selling these pill presses are required to keep records of everybody who buys and sells a press, and also required to report this information to the DEA.

“DEA has found that pill presses and stamps that can be used to make fentanyl pills are being offered for sale on various e-commerce platforms.  E-commerce entities selling pill press machines are generally ‘regulated persons’ under the Controlled Substances Act, 21 U.S.C. § 802(38), and therefore, subject to the recordkeeping, identification, and reporting requirements of 21 U.S.C. § 830,” the DEA said. “As regulated entities, e-commerce platforms are required to comply with CSA recordkeeping and reporting requirements on the distribution, importation, and exportation of pill press machines.  This means that they must collect information on the buyer and seller and provide notice to the DEA of any sale, import, export, or transfer.”

The DEA said that the vast majority of these fake pills are produced by two particular Mexican cartels. The United States government has put increasing pressure on Mexico in recent years to curb the flow of fentanyl, including fentanyl disguised in these fake pills, from crossing over the United States Mexico border. Even after signs were posted all over Sinaloa appearing to ban the production and sale of fentanyl by the authority of the cartels, fentanyl overdoses and seizures have not slowed down at all.

“The drug cartels primarily responsible for manufacturing fentanyl and smuggling it into the United States are the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco Cartel.  These cartels, their members and associates, and other drug traffickers are using pill presses to shape fentanyl powder into pills, and they are using stamps to imprint markings and logos onto those pills as they are pressed,” the DEA said.

According to the DEA, over 79 million fake fentanyl-containing pills were seized in 2023, which marked a 33% increase over pill seizures in 2022. DEA lab tests have shown that 70% of seized pills are pressed and contain fentanyl. Seventy percent of all drug overdoses in 2022 were also due to ingestion of fentanyl.

“Drug traffickers are killing Americans by selling fentanyl hidden in fake pills made to look like real prescription medicines. This is possible because drug traffickers are able to buy the tools they need, like pill presses and stamps, online,” said DEA Administrator Anne Milgram. “E-commerce platforms cannot turn a blind eye to the fentanyl crisis and to the sale of pill presses on their platforms.  They must do their part to protect the public, and when they do not, DEA will hold them accountable.”

The DEA said that they launched the Industry Liaison Project in 2019, in which they communicated with over two dozen of the largest online retailers about pill press sales on their websites. They said that several, including Amazon and Etsy, banned the sale of pill presses on their platforms outright. However, as the hyperlink I included at the top of this article proves, dozens and dozens of pill presses are very much still for sale on Amazon. I also found several pill presses for sale on Etsy with about five seconds of effort on Google.

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A trial is underway in the United States to determine if the former president of Honduras is the anti-drug crusader he framed himself as while in power or a cartel puppet whose influence was used to traffic millions of dollars worth of drugs and firearms into the U.S.

Ex-president Juan Orlando Hernandez began his trial in New York Wednesday as prosecutors outlined the charges, alleging that Hernandez’s rise to power was financed and fueled by powerful cartel syndicates while the defense argued the former president was being framed by cartel operatives for his tough stance on drug crimes.

Hernandez pleaded not guilty to drugs and weapons charges in May, 2022. During his time in office he was awarded over $50 million in anti-narcotics assistance from the United States and many million more in security aid, according to Reuters. Three months after leaving his office, Hernandez was charged with criminal weapons possession and three counts of drug trafficking conspiracy. Attorney General Merrick Garland accused Hernandez of using his power as president to run Honduras as a narco-state.

Prosecutor David Robles said Wednesday that Hernandez was working “hand in hand” with the cartels to import multiple tons of cocaine into the U.S. at the same time he was cooperating with the U.S. federal government from 2014 to 2022. 

“Behind the scenes he made sure that drug traffickers who remained loyal to him were protected,” Robles said in court. “He abused the power of his country – the military, the police, the justice system – to protect and support those traffickers.”

Hernandez’s defense attorney Renato Stabile argued in court that testimony from convicted criminals affected by anti-drug trafficking legislation that Hernandez signed into law while in office should be disregarded by the jury. Some of these laws gave the government increased power to seize assets from convicted traffickers as well as extradite them to the United States. Stabile argued that any witnesses testifying against Hernandez were clearly seeking personal revenge or being paid by the cartels to do so.

“It’s Mr. Hernandez who signed into law all those things that put them out of business,” Stabile said. “Putting murderers and drug dealers on the witness stand who have cut deals and having them point the finger at Mr. Hernandez is not proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”

President Trump praised Hernandez’s efforts to curb drug trafficking and illegal immigration during his administration. A caravan of Hondurans seeking asylum in the United States after back to back hurricanes was thwarted by a coordinated military operation Hernandez was closely involved in, winning him favor with President Trump while already under suspicion of having ties to drug cartels but angering the people of Honduras who accused him of making the country simultaneously unlivable and unescapable. 

“President Hernandez is working with the United States very closely,” Trump said in a Dec. 7, 2019 speech. “You know what’s going on on our southern border. And we’re winning after years and years of losing. We’re stopping drugs at a level that has never happened.”

Hernandez was extradited to the United States in April of 2022, accused of accepting millions of dollars from drug cartels on the promise that they would not be arrested. Upon his arrival in the U.S. Hernandez’s defense attorney Raymond Colon told the court that Hernandez was being mistreated in prison, testifying that he had been held in solitary confinement and not permitted to contact his family.

“He’s being treated like a prisoner of war,” Colon said. “We’re not asking for him to get special treatment because he’s a former head of state, but these conditions are psychologically debilitating.”

According to Reuters, Hernandez brother Mauricio Hernandez and former Honduras national police chief Juan Carlos Bonilla, both of whom were originally supposed to be tried simultaneously with Hernandez, pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges earlier this month. Hernandez faces 40 years to life in prison if convicted on all charges. His trial should last the next two or three weeks.

“This rampant corruption and massive cocaine trafficking came at a cost to the people of Honduras,” Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said shortly after Hernandez was extradited.

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A Reuters investigation found that raids on suspected fentanyl labs by the Mexican government have almost exclusively targeted inactive labs.

Pressure from the United States on Mexico to curb the massive flow of fentanyl coming into our country from theirs has led to a dramatic increase in raids on labs suspected of producing the powerful opioid responsible for the 73,000 some odd overdose deaths of American citizens in 2022 alone. However, it has recently come to light that at least 95% of the raids conducted between January and August of this year were on labs that had already shut down production, according to Reuters.

Data obtained through a freedom of information request submitted to SEDENA, the Mexican Defense Ministry showed that in 2023, Mexican military units performed 503 raids on inactive labs and 24 raids on active labs. In 2022 the military raided 450 inactive labs and 42 active labs. In 2021, the numbers were 195 and 22 respectively, and 267-55 in 2020.  Between December, 2018 and August, 2023 89% of the raids conducted on Mexican fentanyl laboratories were performed on inactive labs. 

Many have speculated this discrepancy in raid effectiveness has spurned from many sources, including the hands-off policies of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador who took office in 2018. President Lopez Obrador has been vocal about trying to solve narcotics issues where they begin by addressing issues like poverty rather than the traditional game of narcotics whack-a-mole so to speak of aiming to take higher level cartel captains. The numbers, however, would also suggest that President Lopez Obrador’s administration has been inflating the data they share with the U.S. by only sharing the total number of raids conducted rather than including the context of how effective these raids have been, as was pointed out by Guillermo Valdes, Mexico’s civilian spy chief from 2007 to 2011.

“SEDENA is ripping up its prestige by altering the figures. Who is going to believe them after this?” Valdes said to Reuters.

Other possible causes for such ineffective raids could be the same problems that have plagued the country of Mexico for decades. Cartel superpowers buying off government, military and law enforcement officials to look the other way and killing those who oppose them certainly makes it difficult to conduct such high-risk operations. One ex-cartel member told Reuters the practice of giving up smaller labs with the understanding that the larger labs can continue business as usual has been commonplace long before fentanyl entered the picture.

“The trade offs happened a lot,” said Margarito Flores, a former associate of notorious cocaine kingpin El Chapo who turned government informant in 2008, eight years before El Chapo’s capture. 

Two active Sinaloan traffickers who refused to be identified for obvious reasons also told Reuters that these raids were often “for show,” as there were several Mexican military members sympathetic to cartel causes and/or on cartel payroll.

Since this data was made available some U.S. lawmakers have accused Mexico of running a completely fictitious war on drugs. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), co-chairman of the senate’s international narcotics control caucus told Reuters this data shows that our neighbors to the South are “fighting an imaginary war on drugs designed to score political points rather than save lives.”

In October of this year, several banners appeared in Sinaloa appearing to ban fentanyl production in the area, though many wrote this off as a cartel tactic to relieve pressure on their organizations by the U.S. and Mexican governments. 

“Attention. Due to the incessant disinformation of some media and the obvious omission of the government in not investigating and prosecuting the true culprits of this epidemic,” the banners said (in Spanish). “In Sinaloa, the sale, manufacture, transportation or any type of business that involves the substance known as fentanyl is strictly prohibited, including the sale of chemicals for its preparation. We have never been nor will we be related to that business. [Be warned of] the consequences. Att: Chapitos.”

The recent data put forth by Reuters was capped in August of this year so it was not immediately clear whether these banners had any effect on fentanyl production, though the U.S. has certainly kept the pressure on Mexico to do something about the issue as President Biden and President Lopez Obrador just spoke on the phone Thursday concerning the need for more enforcement at the border. President Biden also visited the country in November to discuss similar issues.

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An international drug trafficker with possible business ties to a reputed “super cartel” as well as the Italian mafia has handed over the ownership rights to his multi-million dollar private island in an attempt to try and reduce his sentence. 

Known drug kingpin Raffaele Imperiale made headlines in 2016 when police raided one of his homes in Naples and found two original Vincent Van Gogh paintings estimated to be worth more than $58 million each. The paintings had reportedly been stolen in a heist at the Vincent Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam in 2002. He spent five years on the run before being arrested in Dubai in 2021 and extradited to Italy in 2022. 

Imperiale is now staring down the barrow of a lengthy prison sentence after evading arrest in Dubai for several years. He faces over 14 years prison time if convicted, but Imperiale has been cooperating with authorities by giving them information on international crime syndicates he brushed shoulders with during his heyday. According to the Guardian he also offered prosecutors something much bigger: his man-made private island off the coast of Dubai. 

The island called “Taiwan,” not to be confused with the East Asian country, is reported to be worth anywhere from $60 to $80 million. Imperiale is believed to have spent the majority of his time on the run at this island, and on Monday he signed it over to Italian prosecutors.

“It is clear that Imperiale wants sentence reductions,” said the prosecutor, Maurizio De Marco to the Guardian. “We are assessing the validity of his statements, but there seem to be no doubts about their genuineness.”

Imperiale appeared in Italian court Monday alongside 20 other defendants to face charges related to the enormous criminal empire he was allegedly at the helm of. Italian authorities have also alleged Imperiale has close ties to the Camorra mafia family as well as an international “super cartel” that trafficked drugs from South America through five or more European countries including Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and the United Arab Emirates, according to Europol. The super cartel controlled around ⅓ of the cocaine trade in Europe before authorities arrested 49 suspects believed to be associated with the group in 2022. The super cartel was allegedly led by Imperiale and:

• Ridouan Taghi, formerly the most wanted criminal of the Netherlands

• Daniel Kinahan, believed to be the boss of an Irish criminal group

• Bosnian drug trafficker Edin Gačanin.

Authorities have alleged that Imperiale helped run one of the 50 largest drug trafficking operations in the world and had a virtual monopoly secured over nearly all the cocaine produced in Peru. The Guardian said Imperiale got his start running a cannabis cafe in Amsterdam that he inherited from his late brother.

Imperiale led a tale worthy of another Godfather movie during his time as a criminal. He was rumored to have spent over $400,000 every single month while he was on the run in Dubai, according to the Guardian. When Italian authorities searched one of his homes in March, they found over 80 firearms and other weapons, including a grenade and three Kalashnikov rifles, hidden underneath Imperiale’s garage floor. He also had over 5,000 rounds of ammunition, according to Reuters.

Additionally, controversy was stirred up in Italy shortly after Imperiale’s extradition. According to Sunday World, two Italian judicial officers were caught disposing of documents related to the Imperiale case during the course of their job duties. A hidden camera caught the employee putting certain documents into a bin under her desk.

“[They] systematically destroyed, suppressed and concealed, making them untraceable, the following true public documents, represented by documents and / or entire files relating to criminal proceedings pending at the Judicial Offices of the District of the Court of Appeal of Naples,” said officials with the Guardia di Finanza to Sunday World. 

The accused judicial workers told authorities they were trying to lighten their own workload by disposing of the documents, many of which were discovered in the garbage by police who made photocopies of everything. 

No word had yet been released at the time this article was written on whether or not Imperiale’s island offering will have any definitive effect on his sentencing. 

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A top member of the Sinaloa cartel responsible for allegedly distributing thousands of pounds of illegal cannabis was shot and killed in Southern California.

Eduardo Escobedo, 39, was found dead Thursday close to the intersection of Rosecrans and Towne avenues in Los Angeles, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Escobedo and another man were both killed following a shooting incident.

The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s office identified the second man who was shot dead as Guillermo De Los Angeles Jr., 47. Escobedo and De Los Angeles died at the scene after sheriff’s deputies responded to a report of shots being fired in an industrial area filled with warehouses. A third man was taken to a hospital close by with non-life threatening gunshot wounds. The third man was not identified.

Police officers and firefighter-paramedics arrived at the scene Thanksgiving morning after the shoot at an industrial property filled with warehouses.

ABC 7 reports that details about the shooting are scarce as officers sort through information. “We have no motive at this time. It appears that there was some type of gathering or party at the location from last night to early this morning,” sheriff’s Lt. Omar Camacho told ABC 7 Eyewitness News at the scene.

ABC 7 reports that details about the shooting are scarce. “We have no motive at this time. It appears that there was some type of gathering or party at the location from last night to early this morning,” sheriff’s Lt. Omar Camacho told ABC 7 Eyewitness News at the scene.

Video footage shows that investigators examined a black sedan that was near the bodies with its front doors open. Forty-foot shipping containers, semi trucks, and a forklift were all located nearby and provided a hidden spot where the crime could take place.

Who is El Mago, and What’s the Connection to El Chapo?

The Los Angeles Times reports that Escobedo is a convicted drug trafficker nicknamed “El Mago,” which is “The Magician,” in Spanish. Escobedo was the primary local cannabis distributor for Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar, the son of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

Police believe Escobedo also allegedly put out a hit on a rival trafficker who was shot dead in his Bentley on the 101 Freeway in 2008. Escobedo was never charged in the murder, but his brother and another man were convicted and are serving life sentences.

In October 2013, Escobedo was wiretapped and allegedly recorded speaking with Guzmán Salazar about smuggling over five tons of cannabis through a tunnel under the U.S.-Mexico border, prosecutors said.

Escobedo also allegedly laundered the drug earnings by purchasing exotic cars and shipping them to the cartel’s main hub in Culiacan, Sinaloa.

He served nearly five years in federal prison for conspiring to distribute more than 22,000 pounds of pot and laundering drug proceeds. For reference, 22,000 pounds is the equivalent of 11 tons or 10,000 kilos of pot. He was released in 2018 after serving time.

Then Escobedo eluded capture by police for over a decade. El Chapo, on the other hand, was arrested in 2014 in Mazatlan. In 2019, he was convicted by a jury of being a principal leader of a continuing criminal under his leadership of the crime syndicate known as the Sinaloa Cartel. 

In 2019, El Chapo was sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years, and was ordered to pay $12.6 billion in forfeiture. The sentence marks the end of a 30-year drug trafficking career that saw Guzmán rise to the top of Mexico’s infamous Sinaloa drug cartel. 

Addressing the court at his sentencing hearing at the Federal District Court in Brooklyn, New York, Guzmán said he had not been given a fair trial and complained about being held in solitary confinement at Manhattan’s federal correctional facility before and during his three-month trial. “Since the government of the United States is going to send me to a prison where my name will never be heard again, I take advantage of this opportunity to say there was no justice here,” he said.

El Chapo’s wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, was released in September of this year from a California halfway house. Aispuro was sentenced in 2021 to three years in prison after pleading guilty to helping her husband run his multibillion-dollar criminal empire. She had faced a minimum of 10 years in prison, but was spared under a so-called “safety valve” provision because she had no prior criminal record, was not considered a leader, and was not personally involved with violence.

Guzman Salazar is one of Mexico’s most wanted men.

Escobedo lived it up on social media in recent years, posting photos with Floyd Mayweather, Al Pacino, and others. He donned attire by Dolce and Gabbana and diamond-encrusted jewelry.

No arrests have been announced by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

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Pablo Escobar died of a gunshot wound during a 1993 shootout at his hideout in Medellin, but Pablo did not go down without leaving a very strange parting gift to his homeland: a bunch of hippos that escaped his private zoo, became feral and started terrorizing Colombian fishing towns. 

Colombia is planning a ”cull,” a word which means the selective slaughter of certain animals, of a portion of the 166 hippos descended from four hippos which escaped from Escobar’s compound after his death. The animals have taken over a large swath of territory in the Magdalena River where they’ve been designated as an invasive species. They’ve taken over fishing communities and even invaded a school yard at one point but no one was killed, according to information published by the BBC. 

Environment Minister Susana Muhamad said the Colombian government would be working to sterilize about 20 of the hippos and they may also be forced to euthanize others. Hippos have yet to kill anybody in Colombia but they’re considered very dangerous animals. Adult male hippos can grow to be as large as three tonnes and BBC Wildlife estimates hippos kill about 500 people a year, compared to 22 killed every year by lions. Colombian scientists estimate the hippo population could grow as high as 1,000 over the next decade if measures aren’t taken to curb the population. 

“Obviously we feel sorry for those animals, but as scientists we have a duty, to be honest,” said Columbian biologist Nathalie Castelblanco to the BBC. “Hippos are an invasive species in Colombia and if we don’t kill some of their population now, the situation could get completely out of control in just 10 or 20 years.”

According to the BBC, hippos have no natural predators in Colombia and no shortage of natural resources to consume. Thus, the population has rapidly and exponentially expanded in recent years. The hippos were officially designated as an invasive species in Colombia in 2022, and were previously declared “interested persons” by the United States government in a somewhat bizarre attempt to prevent their eradication in Colombia. Indeed, hippos now enjoy many of the same rights as American citizens, but only on American soil as it turns out.

“The ruling has no impact in Colombia because they only have an impact within their own territories. It will be the Colombian authorities who decide what to do with the hippos and not the American ones,” said Camilo Burbano Cifuentes, a criminal law professor at the Universidad Externado de Colombia to the Associated Press in 2021. 

Other options for dealing with the hippos have essentially tried and failed to curb the population growth, including sending a number of them to zoos around the world and a previous round of sterilization. Those efforts failed to make a dent in the uncontrolled hippo reproduction, however, and Minister Muhamad said they must now as a government develop euthanasia protocols for the animals as a last ditch option. 

“We are working on the protocol for the export of the animals,” Minister Muhamad said. “We are not going to export a single animal if there is no authorisation from the environmental authority of the other country.”

Pablo Escobar was one of the most wanted men on planet Earth at the time of his death and peak of his cocaine empire in 1993. His purported crimes included countless murders, kidnapping, bribery, extortion and drug trafficking to name a few. He evaded capture for years. He even convinced the Colombian government to let him serve a short sentence in a prison he built for himself rather than turn himself in. Later on, however, he went back on the run to avoid being jailed in the U.S. and a $2 million bounty was put on his head. He was shot dead by police on a rooftop in Rionegro on December 2, 1993. 

Pablo’s 5,500 acre mega compound in Antioquia, which included his private zoo, was given to the poor and largely left unattended after his death. The hippos were allowed to roam free because they were considered too burdensome to deal with or capture at the time. There were also camels, zebras and giraffes in the zoo, though it was not immediately clear what happened to the other animals after Escobar was killed. 

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Three people are dead including a three-year-old girl and her father after they were caught in a gunfight Monday near a beach in Belize famous for having bricks of cocaine wash up onshore.

Amari Rodriguez, her father Delmar and a man named Carlos Chi were all killed while driving in a golf cart on a dimly-lit road near a lagoon in the San Pedrito neighborhood of San Pedro, Belize, according to a Vice article and reports in local media outlets. Delmar Rodriguez and Chi were both pronounced dead at the scene and Amari’s mother rushed her to a nearby hospital in the golf cart. She was pronounced dead when they got there.

The lagoon in question, Ambergris Caye, has been dubbed as the “Sea Lotto” in the past due to a rash of violent incidents surrounding kilograms of cocaine which authorities say regularly wash up on the shoreline. This has led to ongoing gang wars between local factions of the Bloods and Crips, according to the Vice article.

Ambergris Caye is believed to be such a hotspot for cocaine because of cartel activity further out at sea, wherein bricks of cocaine are believed to be “wet dropped” into the range of particular ocean currents off the coast of Central America which carry the bricks into Mexico. The ocean is not the most predictable mode of transportation, however, and small changes in weather can often send the cocaine off course. An inordinate amount of these lost kilos reportedly end up on a remote northern section of the Caye just south of Mexico’s southern border.

Belizean authorities announced that they had identified two suspects they believed to have been associated with the triple-homicide, both of whom had been arrested on unrelated matters just a week prior to the incident. 

“At this time, we’re looking for two individuals, that is, Michael Brown and Christian Espat,” said Police Commissioner Chester Williams. Those two persons are currently being sought by the police and we are appealing to the public that if they have any information pertinent to their whereabouts, please feel free to call us so that we can go and remove these two dangerous criminals off our streets.”

Commissioner Williams indicated that Espat had a lengthy criminal reputation with local law enforcement. According to the Vice article, Espat was investigated in 2019 after an American doctor and his fly fishing guide were murdered, though Espat was never officially charged with the crime. Commissioner WIlliams said he believed Espat had a relationship with Delmar Rodriguez and that some narcotics-related business may have soured between the two, which presumably led to the killings.

“You would know the name Christian Espat is not new. It has been called on numerous occasions for allegedly committing crimes of this nature. What we have gathered in terms of a motive is that there may have been some drugs found by one of the deceased person[s]. As you would know that he, one of the deceased person[s] was a close affiliate of Christian Espat. And apparently after drugs were found, there was a division between them, due to the fact that […] there was not an equitable share of the drugs, and based on that he was targeted by the Espats. So, it is a motive that we’re looking at. We believe the motive is credible, based on what we have gotten from other sources. And so the police continue to look at that investigation.”

According to Vice, Brown turned himself in on Tuesday after Commissioner WIlliam’s remarks but Espat was still considered at large at the time this article was written. Oddly enough, a video was also released to a Belizean news outlets called Breaking Belize News, in which a man claiming to be Espat denied any involvement in the crimes and also claimed to have been tortured while in police custody.

“Му nаmе іѕ Сhrіѕtіаn Еѕраt. І аm ѕеndіng thіѕ vіdео tо thе mеdіа tо сlеаr mу nаmе, bесаuѕе thе роlісе аrе ассuѕіng mе оf а trірlе murdеr thаt І dіd nоt соmmіt,” Espat said. “ І аm nоt runnіng аnd І аm nоt hіdіng frоm thе lаw. І јuѕt саmе tо thе dосtоr tо ѕее іf thе роlісе dіdn’t dо аnу реrmаnеnt dаmаgе tо mу hеаd. І dоn’t knоw whу thеу аrе ассuѕіng mе оf thіѕ trірlе murdеr, bесаuѕе І knоw І dіdn’t hаvе [аnу] mіѕundеrѕtаndіng аnd nо рrоblеm wіth Dеlmаr Rоdrіguеz. І nеvеr thrеаtеnеd hіm nоr hіѕ fаmіlу, wоrѕе hаvе аnу drug-rеlаtеd соnflісt wіth hіm.”

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