Drug Lord on Municipal Council Payroll

Gang leader Ovideo Omar Castro aka Tulip, gunned down in the parking lot of the  Multiplaza shopping center last weekend,  was on the payroll of the San Miguelito municipality as a community promoter under the leadership of Mayor Héctor Valdés Carrasquilla.

He had a salary of $600 a month.

Valdés Carrasquilla issued a statement in which, without mentioning names or specific events, he justified the hiring of Castro. “As a municipality, we have a commitment to eradicate the problems that generate conflict situations in our communities, so we will continue to play our role as promoters, mediators, and facilitators of young people, and women who are at social risk in our district, regardless of their social strata because now, with the new accusatory criminal system, they are offered the opportunity to reintegrate into society, “ he said.

Valdés Carrasquilla, currently a member of the Democratic Change party, added that San Miguelito “has good people with a desire to improve.”

According to the authorities, Castro was a drug lord from Nuevo Veranillo, San Miguelito, and had ties to the Los Chacales gang, a group accused of the murder of two activists from the ruling Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD): Wendy Rodríguez, who was shot dead in the south corridor in August 2020; and Diógenes Yoyi Vergara, a former deputy, who was assassinated in February of this year in Pacora.

After Castro’s murder, an image circulated on social networks showing the PRD Raúl Pineda, PRD a deputy from San Miguelito, lamenting the incident.

The case is in the hands of the Homicide and Femicide section of the Metropolitan Prosecutor’s Office of the Public Ministry, and until the end of this edition, there were no reports of people captured in the event.

Tulip’s death occurred just three days after the murder on Calle 70 San Francisco of Alexander García Vergara, who resided in San Miguelito and had recently been released from La Joya prison.

These events, and the capture last Saturday of José Cossio, leader of the Calor Calor gang, put the national security strategy against the wall.

However, the director of the National Police, John Dorheim, minimized the events and on the live  : “we live in a paradise. They are isolated acts of criminals. (…) We are developing actions against these groups and we want to tell them that this is a safe country ”.