12 Mexican drug cartel members escape from Cieneguillas prison

Prison authorities from Zacatecas confirmed that on May 6 at 14:22, 12 inmates from the Los Zetas and Northeast cartels escaped the Cieneguillas prison through a 50-meters-long tunnel; hence, they have implemented a special operation to recapture them.

In a videoconference, Jehú Salas and Ismael Camberos , general Interior and Public Security ministers, along with Miguel Rivera Villa , director of Prevention and Social Reintegration, informed of this event and mentioned that authorities have already captured two people who allegedly helped in the escape.

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They added that one of them is a security officer and the other is a person who drove one of the vehicles used to escape the Cieneguillas prison up to an intersection heading to the highway to Saltillo. Authorities are also investigating personnel from the State Preventive Police that remained outside the prison when the escape took place.

Ismael Camberos said that the C-5 received a shooting alert at the Cieneguillas prison and thus an emergency operation was deployed, but it was detected that the shooting came from one of the prison’s towers when an officer activated his firearm upon noticing the inmates were escaping. They used three vehicles .

Miguel Rivera added that since a 100-meter no-climb mesh was installed, the only way to escape was to build a 50-meter long tunnel that was probably built in six to eight months; the hole was covered by a slab that simulated the top floor and it is possible that the inmates extracted the soil as if it belonged to other works inside the prison.

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He said that authorities have already identified the 12 inmates who escaped the prison; they are classified as highly dangerous since they have different criminal profiles and are accused of aggravated kidnapping, femicide, felony murder, unlawful imprisonment, and aggravated robbery that could be punished with up to 50 years of prison.

In the meantime, the Zacatecas government has deployed an operation to search for the inmates with the support of different agencies and a helicopter from the Public Security Ministry.

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