A cartel hitman died over the weekend in a Mexican border state when his cellmate killed him with a makeshift shank. The man was awaiting trial for a mass killing targeting seven victims at a birthday party.
The killing took place over the weekend at a Tamaulipas State Prison in Ciudad Victoria, law enforcement sources revealed to Breitbart Texas. Inside one of the cells, 33-year-old Antonio Ibarra Patinan started fighting with his cellmate. It was during that fight when the cellmate allegedly pulled out a shank and started stabbing Ibarra, who died shortly after as a result of his wounds. The cellmate claimed that he acted in self-defense.
Breitbart Texas had originally reported on the arrest of Ibarra for his alleged role in a cartel attack at a birthday party that killed seven people. The cartel hitman, from Ciudad Mante, was a member of the Cartel Del Noreste faction of Los Zetas and had been sent to Ciudad Victoria as part of a hit squad. As Breitbart Texas has been reporting, the CDN-Los Zetas are waging a fierce turf war against the Gulf Cartel for control of central Tamaulipas.
Unlike border cities where cartel gunmen are able to deploy dozens in armored vehicles, in Ciudad Victoria, the war is fought primarily through targeted kills. In many of those incidents, gunmen killed innocent victims.
Tamaulipas authorities arrested Ibarra and 19-year-old Karla Lizbeth Duarte after a shootout on March 20. State authorities tracked the two to a stash house after they had allegedly killed seven victims at a birthday party. The two were linked to other murders in Ciudad Victoria.
Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to Mexico City and the 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 “Francisco Morales” from Tamaulipas.