The director of the Sinaloa State Police, Joel Ernesto Soto, was shot to death on the highway on Monday, according to the Ministry of Public Security (SSP) of the northwestern state of Mexico.
"In a cowardly aggression, this morning, unfortunately, the director of the State Police, Joel Ernesto Soto, lost his life
. The facts about the Los Mochis-Culiacán highway. Our condolences to the family and society of Sinaloa who have lost a great man, "wrote the secretary Cristóbal Castañeda on his Twitter account, who confirmed the death.
The attack against the police chief comes after the corporation headed by Soto carried out various operations in the city of Culiacán and other areas of the state in recent days, in which alleged hitmen of the Sinaloa Cartel, the which was directed by Joaquín
El Chapo
Guzmán.
[These are the possible heirs of El Mayo Zambada in the Sinaloa Cartel]
The attack occurred this Monday around 7:30 am (local time) on the Benito Juárez highway, at mile 60 (kilometer 85), in the Culiacán-Guamúchil section, on which Soto was traveling from north to south. in a white Nissan Sentra.
Soto was returning from visiting his family in the city of Los Mochis, just over 124 miles (200 kilometers) from Culiacán
, Castañeda said in statements to the media.
Upon reaching that point, the policeman was paired with a vehicle where a commando of hitmen was traveling, who fired assault rifles at the car.
Soldiers from the National Guard and state police cordon off the area where the vehicle was found in which the director of the Sinaloa State Preventive Police, Joel Ernesto Soto, was killed in Culiacán, Sinaloa state, Mexico, on Monday, May 24, 2021. .EFE / Samuel Inzunza
The bullets wounded the policeman, who lost control and went off the road, and the hitmen finished him off. Almost half an hour later elements from the different police and military corporations arrived at the scene to protect the crime scene. reported that two weeks ago Soto had participated in an operation to arrest a group of hit men in Mazatlán who allegedly worked for the Sinaloa Cartel.
[The Sinaloa cartel maintains its leadership in drug trafficking in the United States despite the arrest of 'El Chapo', according to the DEA]
In the last two days, hired killers have been arrested in Culiacán, presumably from the same criminal group currently run by Los Chapitos, sons of Mexican drug trafficker Joaquín
El Chapo
Guzmán, currently incarcerated in the United States.
With almost 100 murders a day,
Mexico is going through a wave of violence that has been increasing since President Felipe Calderón, who served between 2006 and 2012, ordered the use of the army to combat drug trafficking
.
Despite months of confinement during the pandemic, the country recorded 34,600 homicides in 2020, a figure very similar to the 2019 record, when there were 34,700.
There were also more than 800 kidnappings and 604,000 cases of theft, either from homes, from vehicles or from passersby.
With information from EFE.