Gunmen Kill 'El Guacho', Ex-Police Commander and Key Suspect in the 43 Missing Students Case

"Morogris" for Borderland Beat

Humberto Velázquez Delgado (alias "El Guacho"), a retired Guerrero State Police commander and key suspect in the Ayotzinapa missing students case, was killed yesterday afternoon inside his business in downtown Iguala.

Official reports from the State Public Security Secretariat (SSP) indicate that gunmen killed Velazquez Delgado at around 1:20 p.m. in El Sargento, a store where he sold police uniforms and other equipment. The victim was shot in the head and died at the scene.

The former police commander had already survived several assassination attempts. One of them occurred on the Mexico City-Acapulco federal highway in 2010, when the attackers ambushed him. Velazquez Delgado survived without injuries.

In 2018, his son Jonathan was shot to death in Guerrero. When Velazquez Delgado and his family went to the local morgue to claim his body, sicarios stormed the place and killed four of his relatives. Velazquez Delgado survived.

Background

The parents of the 43 missing students had requested authorities to issue an arrest warrant against Velázquez Delgado for years. They said that he had ties to the Guerreros Unidos criminal group and was involved in the September 2014 mass disappearance.

Velazquez Delgado disappeared from public view until 2016. That year, he gave a presence conference where he denied any involvement with an organized crime group. The students' parents said that federal authorities never investigated him because his brother, Ulises, was deputy director of the Iguala Municipal Police under former Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) mayor Esteban Albarran.

In 2017, Guerreros Unidos gang member Ernesto Pineda Vega told investigators that he delivered monthly payments to Velazquez Delgado and his brother. He said that Velazquez Delgado was working on behalf of María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa, the wife of former Iguala mayor José Luis Abarca Velázquez.

Jose Luis Abarca Velazquez (right) was the mayor of Iguala, Guerrero, when the 43 students went missing in September 2014. His wife Maria de los Angeles Pineda Villa (left) belongs to an old criminal clan that was involved with the Beltran Leyva Cartel.

"[He] said the money was for the criminal organization Guerreros Unidos, to which María de los Ángeles Pineda Villa has belonged ever since", Ernesto Pineda Vega said in a statement.

Within the 400 volumes of the Ayotzinapa case file there is a document provided by the Iguala Municipal Public Security Directorate that includes the names of 165 police officers who were active on the day the students went missing.

Among the names include two of the Velazquez Delgado's children, Omar Velázquez Nájera and Jonathan Uriel Velázquez Ruiz, as well as his brother Ulises. They were assigned to "vehicle recovery" throughout Iguala.

Neither the Guerrero Prosecutor's Office nor Mexico's Attorney General's Office (FGR) have called these officials for questioning to clarify what happened the night the students went missing.

Sources: Milenio; Sur de Acapulco; Proceso; Valor por Tamaulipas