A Mexican cartel boss serving time for decapitating 12 people has died after getting infected with the coronavirus in prison, officials said.
Los Zetas leader Moises Escamilla May — known as “Gordo May,” or “Fatty May” — died in prison in Jalisco where he was serving 37 years for his brutal crimes, officials told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“He wasn’t suffering from any disease and started showing breathing symptoms on May 6,” the health ministry said at the end of last week, without identifying Escamilla, AFP said.
He died in a hospital the next day, with a source at the public prosecutor’s office in Jalisco confirming to AFP that it was the cartel boss.
“Fatty May” led a group calling itself “Old School Zetas” and was the main supplier of cocaine in Cancún, where it was also the strongest criminal organization, the BBC said.
He was arrested in 2008 along with eight of his men, the broadcaster said, and sentenced for organized crime and illegally carrying weapons.
The savage crimes included the beheading of a dozen people in the southeastern state of Yucatan in 2008, the reports said.
He was deemed a highly dangerous inmate at the Puente Grande maximum-security prison in Jalisco state before his infection and death, the BBC said.
As of Tuesday morning, Mexico had 36,327 confirmed coronavirus cases, with more than 3,500 deaths, Johns Hopkins University data shows.