BODY PRESUMED TO BELONG TO MEXICAN CARTEL LEADER FOUND WRAPPED IN PLASTIC ON PARK BENCH

A body wrapped in black plastic and believed to be that of a gang leader who turned his back on a powerful drug cartel was recently discovered dumped on a park bench in Tlaquepaque, Jalisco, Mexico.

According to Mexico News Daily, knives were stabbed through two signs and into the corpse. A message scrawled on one seemed to identify the victim as “the traitor El Cholo,” the nickname for Carlos Enrique Sánchez.

Sánchez reportedly was the head of Nueva Plaza Cartel, a gang he created after leaving the Jalisco New General Cartel in 2017. The two groups battled a brutal turf war that centered around the methamphetamine industry in central Mexico.

Shortly before the grisly discovery, video surfaced of Sánchez that appeared to show him handcuffed in front of armed rival Jalisco gang members. In the clip, Sánchez made multiple claims in possibly scripted remarks he was forced to read that he was responsible for several deadly attacks and had been cooperating with Mexico City police. The chief of police denied the allegations, calling them “false messages” from criminals. 

 “This material confirms the existence of an orchestrated strategy to destabilize the state by an organized crime group,” Jalisco Attorney General Gerardo Octavio Solis Gomez said. “Everything indicates that it’s … Carlos Sanchez Martinez, nicknamed ‘El Cholo.'”

Official identification of the body is pending.