A Venezuelan migrant turned Gulf Cartel gunman tried to escape from a hospital where authorities were holding him while he was being treated for his injuries suffered during a crash.
The case began last week in the Tamaulipas capital of Ciudad Victoria, when, as Breitbart News Foundation first reported, Mexican military forces were transporting a group of eight Gulf Cartel gunmen whom they had captured in the nearby town of Tula. The military forces had loaded the gunmen inside an armored vehicle to move them to a holding facility. However, along the way, the military vehicle collided with an SUV at an intersection, injuring three soldiers, the eight gunmen, and three other civilians.
Military forces took the gunmen to a local hospital, where they were to be treated until they could be taken back to a holding facility and be formally charged. However, on September 14, one of those gunmen escaped from the hospital and was on the run for a few hours until authorities recaptured him, trying to hide in an empty lot.
The gunman who escaped was identified as Jose Orlando Balboa, a Venezuelan migrant who entered Mexico while trying to reach the United States. Along the way, he was recruited by the Gulf Cartel and joined its ranks as a gunman until his recent arrest.
Credit: SSPC Mexico
Balboa was being kept at the hospital due to a broken leg that he suffered during the crash and required surgery. Despite his injury, on September 14 at 4:00 a.m., Balboa climbed out the window of his hospital room using a makeshift rope made from bedsheets and tried to escape. When the nursing staff discovered the escape, they sounded the alarm, and authorities began the manhunt that ended when they found him hiding in an empty lot. The Tamaulipas government has refused to answer questions from Breitbart News Foundation about the growing presence of migrants within the ranks of drug cartels in the state.
Editor’s Note: Breitbart News Foundation traveled to Mexico City and the states of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas, including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas, if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart News Foundation’s Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and their original Spanish. This article was written by “Francisco Morales” from Tamaulipas.
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