MONTERREY, Nuevo Leon – Police in Mexico arrested a cartel assassin wanted in connection with the videotaped torture and execution of a border state police commander and another officer. The arrest followed a shooting at a bar in one of the ritziest suburbs of Northern Mexico. Nuevo Leon police turned the hitman over to Tamaulipas state authorities for prosecution.
Detectives with Nuevo Leon’s State Investigations Agency (AEI) arrested 31-year-old Jose Carlos “El Guero Lentes” Garcia Perez following a shooting at a bar in the entertainment area known as Centrito Valle in the ritzy suburb of San Pedro. Garcia Perez was injured in the shooting that appears to have started as a fight inside a bar called Torito Sinaloense.
Law enforcement sources revealed to Breitbart News that after the shooting, Garcia Perez went to a local hospital for treatment where he tried to avoid being identified by providing misleading information to investigators about his identity. Despite his efforts, AEI investigators matched him to an outstanding warrant from Tamaulipas for kidnapping and murder charges related to the execution of a police commander and a police investigator in the border city of Nuevo Laredo.
At the time of his arrest, Garcia Perez claimed to not be currently working for any cartel. AEI agents turned over Garcia Perez to Tamaulipas State authorities who locked him up at the prison in Nuevo Laredo awaiting trial.
Case information provided to Breitbart News revealed that in 2016, El Guero Lentes allegedly worked as a hitman for the Old School Z or Vieja Escuela faction of Los Zetas. The cartel sent him to Nuevo Laredo to take control of the region from a rival Los Zetas faction called Northeast Cartel (CDN).
As part of their effort to take over the region, Garcia Perez allegedly targeted and kidnapped longtime Tamaulipas State Police Commander Jose Wenceslao Gaznarez Gonzales and one of his investigators Maria Liliana Vasquez Arreola. The hitmen kidnapped the two cops as they were leaving a restaurant called Cabo Grill in the downtown area of Nuevo Laredo. A month later, authorities found the tortured bodies of the two cops in a clandestine gravesite.
Breitbart News reported at the time, that the Old School Z hitmen videotaped themselves torturing Gaznarez while claiming he was the link between the CDN and law enforcement in the city.
Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to the Mexican States of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities. The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by Tony Aranda from Nuevo Leon.