Mexican military kills gang leader ‘El Neto’ in shoot-out following escape from prison
Anna Giaritelli
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EXCLUSIVE — A Mexican gang leader who escaped prison across the border from El Paso, Texas, this week was killed overnight following a shoot-out with Mexican authorities, according to two federal government sources who shared an unreleased picture.
Los Mexicles gang leader Ernesto Alfredo Pinon, or “El Neto,” died late Wednesday after a run-in with Mexican authorities on his fourth day at-large in Ciudad Juarez, according to two federal law enforcement officials in El Paso who spoke with the Washington Examiner Thursday.
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“They took him into custody injured. [Piñón] didn’t ‘make it’ to the hospital,” one official wrote in a text message.
A photo taken by Mexican authorities that has yet to be officially released to the public showed Pinon’s face, bloodied from wounds.
The escape and killing come three days before President Joe Biden is slated to visit El Paso on Sunday. El Paso sits directly on the U.S.-Mexico border next to Ciudad Juarez, a city of 2 million people and one of the most dangerous places in the world because of the heavy presence of competing cartels.
Roughly two dozen other prison inmates who escaped, including another cartel leader who is on the FBI’s Most Wanted Fugitives List, remain at large.
Former Chihuahua Gov. Javier Corral described him as the “toughest and heartless drug trafficker of the Mexicles criminal group.”
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“He has been one of the generators of the greatest violence in the city from prison, and now he is back on the streets,” Corral wrote on Twitter following his escape Sunday.
Pinon joined Los Mexicles in 2007 at the age of 18. The gang served as the enforcement arm of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s former Sinaloa Cartel. He had been serving a 224-year sentence for kidnapping and murder charges.