Tijuana: "El Patas" of CAF gunned down

Throw Away for Borderland Beat from PuenteNorte

El Patas an old time CAF sicario and killer of women and children

The man shot yesterday in front of the Municipal Palace of Tijuana is one of the main members of the old guard of the Arellano Félix Cartel (CAF), for which he went  from a drug dealer to a bloodthirsty assassin who participated in the execution of 19 members of a family, including a pregnant woman, children and babies, in Ensenada in 1998.

His name is José Gerardo Malagón Maciel "El Patas" and he had also been arrested with hundreds of kilograms of drugs and thousands of dollars in cash.

On Monday, March 25, around 6:30 in the afternoon, the CAF member was shot and killed by another man while he was inside a gray Nissan Sentra vehicle in front of the Municipal Palace on Avenida Centenario.

The 60-year-old man received two shots in the chest and his companion, who was driving the car, was injured in the arm, so he was able to drive to the General Hospital, where both were treated. [Patas later died according to several reports]

Their attackers, who shot them from another vehicle, fled the area in the direction of Colonia Libertad. When the Municipal Police

went to the site of the events, found four casings in front of the pharmacy La Más Barata, which is located in the roundabout of City Hall.

The criminal career of José Gerardo Malagón Maciel "El Patas" began under the orders of Ismael

Higuera Guerrero "El Mayel" and Efraín Pérez Pasuengo "El Efra", leaders of the CAF in the nineties, for those who crossed drugs into the United States .

After "El Mayel" and his brother Gilberto "Gilillo" Higuera Guerrero changed sides to the Sinaloa Cartel and then ended up in prison, as well as the arrest of "El Efra," both made in the early 2000s, Malagón Maciel continued working for the Arellano brothers, directly with Francisco Javier Arellano Félix, "El Tigrillo" and Fernando Sánchez Arellano "El Ingeniero".

However, his criminal life gained greater notoriety when he participated in one of the most brutal crimes seen in the world of drug trafficking in Mexico.

 

el rodeo ranch

On the morning of September 17, an armed commando entered the "El Rodeo" ranch, located in the El Sauzal de Rodríguez settlement in Ensenada. Within the ranch, there were three houses of the Castro, Tovar and Altamirano families, which shared kinship..  19 people were killed The aim of the assassins was Fermín Castro, whom the CAF accused of having stolen drugs, but decided to send a message to all his enemies and traitors executing the three families.

Among the victims, there was a woman with eight months of pregnancy, two babies and children from 4 to 9 years old, as well as several teenagers, who were placed face down in one of the courtyards of the ranch to take their lives. Only two minors survived, who managed to hide when the killers entered the houses.

Although the authorities never prosecuted "El Patas" for this terrible massacre, it was learned that he was one of the assassins sent by the CAF.

Years later, in March 2010, he was arrested along with another CAF operator, named Harry Alberto Llamas with a load of 507 kilos of marijuana and more than 10 thousand dollars in cash in Tijuana.

The arrest was in charge of the Municipal Police and the Mexican Army when they responded to a report of two suspicious trucks that were in the Padre Canyon, La Presa delegation, but Malagón regained his freedom only five months later.

 

Patas at right

For his part, Harry Alberto Llamas survived an attack on December 4, 2015 while eating at a Japanese restaurant, Fusión 40, which he owns and which is located on the Diaz Ordaz Boulevard in front of the Mercado de Todos in La Mesa Tijuana.

Alberto Llamas, who like "El Patas" Malagón was part of the CAF since the 90s was shot four times in the arm and thorax by the hit man Gregorio Dávalos Hernández "El Goyo", who was arrested along with his accomplice Francisco Javier Hidalgo Tarazón "El Bigotes" by the Municipal Police, to which they confessed that the homicide had been ordered by his nickname boss "El Rocky", who was the head of the plaza in Rosarito.

In addition to being arrested with drugs along with "El Patas", Alberto Llamas had been captured in Tapachula, Hidalgo in 2000 with 3 tons of cocaine transported from Colombia