Cartel boss accused of being Ryan Wedding’s protector is shot dead in gunfight with Mexican police - Toronto Star
Edgar Aarón Vazquez, identified as the leader and founder of the New Empire Cartel, was shot dead Thursday evening while Mexican federal officers were executing a warrant for his arrest.
Edgar Aarón Vazquez, left, was accused of being a cartel boss who protected alleged druglord Ryan Wedding, seen right after his high-profile arrest.
A man identified as the cartel boss who protected ex-Olympian and alleged drug kingpin Ryan Wedding while he was a fugitive in Mexico has been killed in a gunfight with federal authorities there, the country’s top security official says.
Edgar Aarón Vazquez, known as “the General” and identified as the leader and founder of the New Empire Cartel, was shot dead Thursday evening while Mexican federal officers were executing a warrant for his arrest in Naucalpan, State of Mexico, the Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection Omar García Harfuch announced.
Vazquez was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department last year over his links to Wedding’s alleged cocaine empire. At the time, the department said Vazquez provided protection for the then-fugitive and used his police contacts to help locate murder targets for the drug ring.
Wedding is accused of running a billion-dollar criminal enterprise that worked with Mexican cartels and ordered multiple murders around the globe — including the mistaken identity killings of an innocent Indian couple in Caledon, Ont., and the assassination of a U.S. federal witness who helped dismantle part of the network.
Despite the allegations, Vazquez, 42, was not facing U.S. charges in either of the two indictments against Wedding and dozens of his alleged associates.
The New Empire Cartel is described as a violent criminal group largely based in Mexico City. According to Harfuch’s statement, he was being investigated for offences ranging from kidnapping and murder to money laundering and trafficking drugs to the United States and Canada.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the pending charges against Vazquez were directly tied to the sprawling prosecution in the Wedding case.
Mexican federal judge Luis Benítez Alcántara, 49, of Mexico City, was arrested on Sunday in Colombia.
