El Mayo's Youngest Son, Serafin Zambada-Ortiz Rumored to be in Critical Condition After Car Accident in Sonora, Mexico

"Socalj" for Borderland Beat

Serafín Zambada-Ortiz, son of Sinaloa Cartel leader El Mayo, was reportedly involved in a fatal car accident yesterday after seemingly colliding with a semi-truck on the Sonoyta-Caborca ​​road section in Sonora, Mexico.

Serafín Zambada Ortiz, a US citizen and youngest son of Sinaloa Cartel boss Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada, was reportedly found in a mangled white Kia in Sonora, Mexico at around 9:00 AM yesterday morning.

The two people inside the car, which appeared to have collided with the rear of a tractor-trailer truck, were transferred to nearby hospitals. According to sources consulted by Infobae Mexico, a woman identified as Norma "N" 30 years old, lost her life in the incident, while the driver is seriously injured. The man was officially identified as Saul Ortiz.

Local media reported that Serafín's supposed girlfriend, 30-year-old Norma Lopez, died while on the way to receiving treatment.

Serafín was rumored to have survived the collision but sustained serious injuries. He was taken to a private clinic in the city of Hermosillo.

Reports of his injuries include broken ribs and a perforated lung.

Sonora state police were seen guarding the site of the crash while an investigation into the incident was carried out to determine who was responsible.

Who is Serafin Zambada-Ortiz?

The day Serafin Zambada Ortiz turned 2, a car bomb exploded outside his birthday party. When he was 9, just hours after he and his mother had left a Mazatlán hotel to treat an outbreak of chickenpox, an assassin squad from the Arrellano-Felix Cartel stormed inside, killing his grandparents, uncle, and aunt.

The constant threat of bloodshed kept Zambada's world very small as a child, moving from place to place under the watchful eye of his mother, at times staying hidden indoors while other children got to play soccer.

"I lived in a golden cage with luxuries that were useless," Zambada wrote of his upbringing amid turbulent narco wars.

When his mother, Leticia Ortiz-Hernandez's family was killed, she hid her family from the outside world, frequently moving from home to home and keeping Serafin from school. His father sent armed guards to live with them.

Ortiz told Serafin that his grandparents had been killed in a robbery, but he was starting to understand his family's unusual position in society. He'd spot his father's picture on wanted posters. While Serafin described his dad as someone who provided "love and affection," he was not a constant presence.

Ortiz finally took the children and fled to Phoenix, overcome with depression and paranoia. Serafin and his sister, Teresa, got to live as normal schoolchildren there and learned English. But that tranquillity ended two years later when Ortiz's visa expired and they returned to the cartel's stronghold.

Serafin and his sister returned to Arizona -- this time without their mother -- to attend The Orme School, a prestigious boarding school near Prescott. They returned to Culiacan after a year.

Despite his mother's best efforts to shield him from that world, Zambada couldn't resist the pull of the family business. By 22, he was the leader of a drug distribution cell, caught on a wiretap conspiring to traffic large quantities of cocaine and marijuana from Mexico into San Diego. By 23, he was in jail.

Serafín was arrested by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in November 2013, accused of importing cocaine and cannabis into the US. He was handed a five-and-a-half-year prison sentence and was released in September 2018, reportedly after cooperating with the DEA and having already served the majority of his sentence in the San Diego MCC.

Serafín's dad El Mayo took control of the infamous Sinaloa Cartel following the arrest of its former leader Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán in 2016. El Mayo was El Chapo's right-hand man while the Sinaloa Cartel grew to be the world's largest drug trafficking organization in the 1990s. Despite the working relationship between the two, El Mayo is currently locked in a bloody turf war with El Chapo's children, most notably Ovidio Guzmán, for control of various trafficking routes.

Sources Infobae, Daily Star, Twitter, Borderland Beat