Man with apparent cartel links shot and killed at a Starbucks in Mexico City
A man was shot to death Thursday at a Starbucks coffee shop in an upscale neighborhood of Mexico City, and police said he apparently had links to a northern Mexico drug cartel.
City police said the shooting occurred inside the Plaza Carso shopping mall on the edge of the wealthy Polanco district. Photos posted by police showed crime scene tape around a seating area near the entrance to the coffee shop.
Journalist Alicia Salgado also posted purported images and video from the scene.
⚠️La tarde de este jueves 20 de abril se registró una intensa movilización policiaca en la Ciudad de México, específicamente en la alcaldía Miguel Hidalgo. De acuerdo con los primeros reportes, se registró una intensa balacera en Starbucks de Plaza Carso, en la zona de Polanco,… pic.twitter.com/L59aNje6Z9
— Alicia Salgado (@allizesalgado) April 20, 2023
City police chief Omar Garcia Harfuch wrote in his social media accounts that the 42-year-old victim had an outstanding arrest warrant in Oklahoma for drug trafficking. Harfuch said the victim also had ties to Panama, Colombia and San Diego.
Harfuch said the man, whose name was not released, was "presumably linked to organized crime in the north of the country."
It was the second killing this month at a Starbucks outlet in Mexico. Earlier this month, a man was shot to death at one of the coffee shops in the Caribbean coast resort of Tulum. Prosecutors there said thieves tried to take the man's watch and then opened fire.
The shooting come just days after U.S. prosecutors announced charges against 28 members of the Sinaloa cartel for smuggling massive amounts of fentanyl into the United States. The three sons of former drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán — known as the "Chapitos" — were among those charged.
According to an indictment released by the Justice Department, the Chapitos and their cartel associates used corkscrews, electrocution and hot chiles to torture their rivals while some of their victims were "fed dead or alive to tigers,"
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