On Las Cabras hill, in the Durán canton (Guayas), and on the Punta Carnero-La Diablica road (Santa Elena), in recent months they have found hitman training centers, open spaces where it is presumed that young people and adolescents entering to criminal gangs, they start practicing to hone their marksmanship, load a gun, and perform contract kills.
Gangs dedicated to the sale of drugs use them to try to eliminate competition and gain territory.
The first space of this type was discovered in May 2022 at the top of Las Cabras hill, a sector that has been intervened more than six times and where six dismembered bodies were found in the first half of 2022.
The gangs recruit children as young as 10 to sell drugs there, a policeman who did not want to be identified revealed at the time.
Colonel Jorge Hadathy, Durán police chief, then explained that these children first sell drugs for the organizations and then, when they are addicted, the chiefs give them a weapon and become hitmen.
The “school of hit men” in Cerro Las Cabras in Durán recruits 10-year-old children to sell drugs and trains them for crimes
In one of the hideouts of Los Lagartos, one of Durán’s gangs, outside the hill, authorities found stuffed lizards. The police believe that the gangs, in order to attract the children who later arm, distribute toys alluding to the organization.
The gang Los Choneros, and its armed wing Chone killers, is also implicated in the bloodletting of Ecuadorian prisons. In the past year, around 400 inmates have been killed in gang massacres for control of the prison system.
The clandestine training center that was discovered this week in the province of Santa Elena was dismantled this Thursday, but the work continues. There the Police found a kind of quarry that was not visible from the road.
In this place there were more than 90 tires placed as walls and obstacles.
Silhouettes of people were also found for the murderers to shoot at the target.
Shooting range used by criminal gangs in Santa Elena was dismantled after detection of the site
According to Colonel Juan Carlos Soria, police chief of Santa Elena, it has been detected that the perpetrators of the crimes are technically prepared people. That space would have been running for about six months.
In the quarry, dozens of 9mm caliber ballistic evidence were found that are going to be prosecuted. They also found casings from traumatic (non-lethal) weapons.
systematic operation
The security expert, lawyer and former member of the Police, Kléber Carrión, points out that in recent years the gangs have developed a systematic modus operandi, seeking to maintain the permanence of their actions and their members, which is why they are recruiting minors and are trained in these so-called “hitman schools.”
“In a few words we have crime for a while because those minors who are being used today to kill, if they are not killed along the way, will be the guardians of the children who are being recruited right now,” reflects Carrión.
He points out that the lack of accountability that many children have makes the organizations take them younger and younger, because in case of being tried (from the age of 14) they can only give them the maximum sentence of 8 years, that is, that At the age of 23 or maximum 24, they leave the Centers for Adolescent Offenders (CAI), with their records erased for being minors, and they become the guardians of the new adolescents who are killing on the streets.
Carrión believes that organizations have thought of everything and that they have a constantly rotating “manpower”. “It is a highly planned vision that the leaders of these criminal gangs have,” admits the former police officer.
Incursion of minors in hired killers
In fact, the Minister of the Interior, Juan Zapata, said last year that many of the gunmen who were arrested after the attacks against police officers were minors, including 14-year-olds who said they had already killed several people.
Zapata spoke of at least 13 detainees who did not reach the age of majority.
The lawyer Kléber Carrión maintains that as long as the law is not changed, little can be done, since in his opinion it is time for minors to be tried as adults for certain serious crimes such as murder.
He says that in these cases the rights of children are not being violated, but true justice is being done because they execute their victims with conscience and will, “there is fraud in their action and they even charge for this murder,” he stresses.
In Peru and other Latin countries, these reforms to the law have already been made, but the Ecuadorian National Assembly has not yet debated this request.
In 2022 there were 68 minors in the Guayaquil correctional facility and at least 50 with socio-educational measures and police protection. These are cases of Zone 8 (Guayaquil, Durán and Samborondón). (YO)
Source: Eluniverso
Mario Twitchell is an accomplished author and journalist, known for his insightful and thought-provoking writing on a wide range of topics including general and opinion. He currently works as a writer at 247 news agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
