‘Criminal violence’ adds 681 victims and stains streets with blood

By Research Unit

Since he was 15 years old, Alexander León Vélez had been consuming ‘H’ and ‘Plo Plo’, a combination of cocaine with sodium bicarbonate and water. At 23, four shots ended his life. Two men on a motorcycle shot him in the early hours of February 22 on Trinitaria Island, in Guayaquil.

Death found Diego Mayorga Molina in the bathroom. Some guys broke into his home, in the Abel Gilbert Pontón 2 cooperative in Durán, and shot him; while Carlos Camba Lucio, 33, was ambushed and shot in block 5 of Bastión Popular, in northwest Guayaquil. Carlos had realized that he was being followed by two men on a motorcycle and ran several blocks, but the projectiles hit him in the doorway of a house.

Jhonny Bowen Briones, alias Pachucho, on the other hand, died on his motorcycle, when he was going to visit his mother-in-law in El Guabito, in Portoviejo. Several men from a car riddled him on January 29. His brother Jorge and five other friends were also shot dead while praying for Jhonny’s soul on February 5.

The list of violent deaths in the country is longer this year and has stained the streets with blood, the courts with impunity and homes with tears and fear. “In a few months we will be living in terror, we are living as if in house arrest, locked up in the house,” a neighborhood leader in Bastión Popular lamented nervously.

In the months of January and February 2022, 681 murders were recorded nationwide, an average of 340 deaths per month, while in 2021 the average was 234, according to figures from the State Attorney General’s Office. The numbers of the National Police do not coincide, but they reach 620 deaths in the first two months of this year, an average of 310 per month.

The Prosecutor’s Office and the Police, who record the names of the dead in their files, did not provide them when this newspaper requested it, for this report, on March 10. “These cases are reserved,” the Prosecutor’s Office said in writing.

Hence EL UNIVERSO sought information on the more than 600 deceased throughout the country, and managed to collect the names of 439 victims (some of them appear in the photo), their ages, place and time of death, weapon and means of transportation used for the crime, circumstances in which they died and their criminal record.

The murderers move, according to the analyzed data, in groups of two or three, usually on motorcycles, although they have also used cars, tricycles, boats or even approached and fled on foot.

This is what happened to Tulio Cedeño Vélez, 36, on February 13. He was in his home, in the San José de Palestina neighborhood (Guayas), watching television when the gunmen entered and riddled him with a firearm, the object most frequently used in murders, according to data collected by this Daily. “Nothing was stolen,” said a Tulio neighbor.

The majority (94%) of those murdered were men, almost all of them hit-man style.

They are selective deaths that have an order from above, from the organization, to eliminate him or take his life, and that is by threat, by control of territory. It is that, whoever enters organized crime, the way out of it is with death

Colonel Wilson Torres, police chief of the Portete District, in Guayaquil.

EL UNIVERSO also reviewed the judicial processes and the complaints of the 439 deceased that it managed to identify in the first two months of the year. 41% of the victims (182) had lawsuits or criminal complaints versus 33% (144) who had no criminal record. The remaining percentage (26%) had civil proceedings (food, debts, embezzlement, divorces, traffic violations) or their data was insufficient to make a successful search in the court records.

Of the 182 murdered who had a criminal record, 50 had been prosecuted for drug trafficking or illicit substance trafficking, 60 for robbery, 43 for illegal possession of weapons, the rest for murder, homicide and femicide..

The numbers indicate that the deaths that are reported daily in Guayaquil have affected, for the most part, those who have been linked to illicit activities or have been part, as indicated by judicial processes, of criminal organizations. The Police qualifies it as “criminal violence”, and it includes the struggles to capture territories to sell drugs and also the ‘betrayals’ between gangs of ‘car robbers’ and ‘robamotos’, even robbery of peoplecrimes in which deaths sometimes occur, either of the aggressor or the victim.

“90% is criminal violence and 10% interpersonal violence, fights, interpersonal and family problems,” explained Dorian Balladares last January when he was in charge of the DinasedNational Directorate of Crimes against Life, Violent Deaths, Disappearances, Extortion and Kidnapping.

Diego Mayorga, for example, received two sentences for trafficking illicit substances, the last one in April 2018, in which he was sentenced to 40 months and ordered to be rehabilitated for his drug addiction, according to court proceedings.

There it is stated that Alexander León, also murdered, was sentenced in 2018 to two years in prison for drug trafficking. “I told him ‘son, he leaves drugs’, but he didn’t listen to me, he ended up dead,” his mother, Fabiola Vélez, told the press.

Violent, uncontrollable deaths in Esmeraldas. A crime is reported almost daily and it is the second province with the most cases

The Bowen brothers, Jhonny and Jorge had been prosecuted for various crimes. Jorge was dismissed in a trial for the theft of a vehicle in 2013. In 2010 he had been investigated for illegal possession of weapons, in 2017 for drug trafficking and in 2018 and 2019 the Prosecutor’s Office opened two previous investigations for causes that do not appear in the Judicial Function.

Jhonny, according to the records, was declared innocent before a murder complaint in 2018, but was sentenced to two months in prison for illegal possession of weapons in 2021, the year in which the Prosecutor’s Office refrained from charging him in a robbery case, and was declared innocent in a drug trafficking process.

These are the five provinces with the most violent deaths so far in 2022

Before he was killed, Carlos Camba had been prosecuted for illegal possession of weapons and robbery. On May 12, he was arrested for holding up a bus with a revolver, along with other criminals. They all pleaded guilty to ask for a reduced sentence. Carlos was sentenced to 20 months in prison and was released on January 12. He was killed on February 6.

The increase in criminal violence in the streets, analyzes the criminal profiler Alexandra Mantilla, has its explanation in the reduction in prison violence in recent months, due to the control taken by the Armed Forces and the Police since November past, when the last massacre took place in the country. “The internal alters the external and vice versa. If inside the prison they cannot have a territory dominated by the gang, they are going to do it outside”, says the security expert. (I)

33% of those murdered in January and February of this year had no criminal record or complaints, according to records

They fell dead for resisting personal robberies or robberies of the premises they were guarding, because they were mistaken for a friend or family member, because they came out in defense of someone or because they were close to those wanted by assassins. Of the 439 names of victims of violent deaths compiled by this newspaper -in January and February 2022-, 144 (33%) had no history or complaints, according to the review of the 681 murders registered by the Prosecutor’s Office in that period.

Marianela Lastra Quedambu, for example, died of a gunshot to the head on Friday, February 25, when, at 7:00 p.m., several gunmen came to her home, in the San Martín de Porres neighborhood of Esmeraldas. Some witnesses said that Marianela, 78, came out in defense of one of the people in the house, whom the hitmen were supposedly looking to kill.

John Cervantes Zambrano, 21, was shot while working on his mototaxi with Freddy Rodríguez Guillén, alias el Diablo, as a passenger. Two men on a motorcycle caught up with them on the Pedernales-El Carmen highway and shot them on the night of Tuesday, February 15. El Diablo had been released twelve days earlier, after serving 20 months in prison for the crime of robbery.

The Police presume that the double crime was due to a settling of scores with the Devil. John Cervantes was studying Economics at Uleam (Eloy Alfaro Lay University of Manabí), he had just bought the mototaxi. “I was paying for it,” his brother David said, adding that John attended an evangelical church.

The increase in violent deaths this year alarms the population that has seen how, in the midst of the crimes, collateral victims have also fallen, including children, young people, women or older adults. Security expert Daniel Pontón warns that measures must be taken to stop crime.

I would not rule out a curfew in Guayaquil to stop the wave of violence. It is unprecedented, looking at statistics, it is higher than in 2010, which was the highest year in violence in the country in its entire history.

Daniel Pontón, security expert.

In the massacre that occurred on January 21 in the sector known as La Playita, in Guasmo, five people were killed. Three of them had no criminal record, according to the review of this newspaper. Ricardo Delgado Gilces, Joel Fernández Medina and Juan Sangotuña Malla were in a sports field when 13 assassins arrived in boats along the estuary with rifles, pistols and machine guns, and opened fire in that public space.

Iván Cordero Quintuña and Santiago Valencia Caicedo, 55 and 56 years old, were killed because they opposed criminals stealing their belongings on February 8 and 28. Since 2002, Iván has been repairing shoes, while Santiago lived from fishing. Iván was robbed in the Flor del Norte cooperative, in the northwest of Guayaquil, while Santiago was shot three times on the high seas, they tried to steal the engine of his boat.

Luis Alberto Ruiz Noboa, 40, was murdered in the living room of his house in Bastión Popular on January 30. From the window, gunmen shot him after mistaking him for his brother-in-law, Carlos Rivadeneira, head of the Pascuales district, told the press. “We presume that the attack was not against the deceased today but against a relative who has several criminal proceedings, one for death, another for illegal substances, kidnapping, robbery,” he lamented. (I)