Mexico grieve for marines who crashed after drug lord’s capture

• Mexican navy holds ceremony to remember 14 marines who died in a helicopter crash.
• Crash was an accident, navy says; cause is still being investigated.
Advertisement
• Marines were assisting in capture of Rafael Caro Quintero, co-founder of Guadalajara drug cartel.

The Mexican navy held a ceremony to remember 14 marines who died when their helicopter crashed in the country’s north.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the marines were assisting in the capture of drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero on Friday.

According to the navy, the crash was an accident, and the cause is still being investigated.

The crash killed only one person aboard the Black Hawk helicopter.

President López Obrador stated that the plane had crashed shortly before landing in Los Mochis, Sinaloa state’s northernmost city, “after fulfilling its mission of lending support to those carrying out the arrest warrant for Rafael Caro Quintero.”

Quintero, who was on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list, was a co-founder of the now-defunct Guadalajara drug cartel in the late 1970s.

In 1985, he was convicted of ordering the torture and murder of Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, a US Drug Enforcement Administration agent who had infiltrated the Guadalajara cartel.

However, an appeals court ruled in 2013 that he had been tried in the wrong jurisdiction and released him after serving 28 years of his 40-year sentence.

Rafael Caro Quintero had already fled when a new arrest warrant was issued less than a week later.

According to the navy, the drug lord was apprehended by a bloodhound named Max, a female dog typically used for search and rescue missions following natural disasters.

Max discovered 69-year-old Quintero hiding in the bushes near Choix.

The United States Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar praised Mexico’s navy for apprehending the drug lord, saying it was a purely Mexican operation with no US involvement.