MEXICO CITY, January 10 Fabricio Colon Pico, heading the second largest Ecuador's Los Lobos gang, escaped from prison after riots were organized there, the SNAI prison service reported.
“»In the Chimborazo No. 1 prison, on the morning of January 9, clashes occurred between prisoners, the National Police and prison staff. After this incident, the detainee Colon P., who was in prison, escaped from custody along with other prisoners,» it says in a SNAI message on the social network X.
New unrest broke out in Ecuadorian prisons on Monday night amid the authorities' actions to reorganize the penitentiary system; during searches in one of them, it became known about the escape of another dangerous bandit, Jose Adolfo Villamar, nicknamed «Fito» «, who heads the country's largest gang, Los Choneros.
According to SNAI, after Colon Pico fled, 12 people who fled with him were detained in hot pursuit, but the leader himself managed to escape. The police and army are searching for him.
Amid the unrest, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa declared a 60-day state of emergency to use the armed forces to regain control of the prison system. These government actions caused a wave of unrest in the cities of Ecuador — on Tuesday night, criminals began to burn cars and buses, and explosions of improvised explosive devices and grenades were recorded in Guayaquil. Police said unknown assailants kidnapped seven police officers in the capital Quito and the southwestern city of Machala in less than 24 hours.
On Tuesday, after an incident in Guayaquil, where bandits seized the studio of a local television channel and its presenters, Noboa declared an internal armed conflict in the country and ordered the army to “neutralize” more than two dozen criminal gangs numbering tens of thousands of participants.