Death and Afterward
The war against Escobar ended on December 2, 1993, amid another attempt to elude the Search Bloc. Using radio triangulation technology provided by the French, a Colombian electronic surveillance team, led by Brigadier Hugo Martinez, found him hiding in a middle-class barrio in Medellín. With authorities closing in, a firefight with Escobar and his bodyguard, Alvaro de Jesús Agudelo AKA "El Limón," ensued. The two fugitives attempted to escape by running across the roofs of adjoining houses to reach a back street, but both were shot and killed by Colombian National Police. Escobar suffered gunshots to the leg, torso, and the fatal one in his ear. It has never been proven who actually fired the final shot into his head, or determined whether this shot was made during the gunfight or as part of possible execution, and there is wide speculation about the subject. Some of the family members believe that Escobar could have committed suicide. His two brothers, Roberto Escobar and Fernando Sánchez Arellano, believe that he shot himself through the ears: "He committed suicide, he did not get killed. During all the years they went after him, he would say to me every day that if he was really cornered without a way out, he would shoot himself through the ears."
After Escobar's death and the fragmentation of the Medellín Cartel the cocaine market soon became dominated by the rival Cali Cartel, until the mid-1990s when its leaders, too, were either killed or captured by the Colombian government.
The Robin Hood image that he had cultivated continued to have lasting influence in Medellín. Many there, especially many of the city's poor that had been aided by him while he was alive, mourned his death. About 25,000 were present for his burial.
Read more about this topic: Pablo Escobar/Archive1
Famous quotes containing the words death and, death and/or afterward:
“I don’t know much about death and the sorriest lesson I’ve learned is that words, my most trusted guardians against chaos, offer small comfort in the face of anyone’s dying.”
—Alison Hawthorne Deming (b. 1946)
“The techniques of opening conversation are universal. I knew long ago and rediscovered that the best way to attract attention, help, and conversation is to be lost. A man who seeing his mother starving to death on a path kicks her in the stomach to clear the way, will cheerfully devote several hours of his time giving wrong directions to a total stranger who claims to be lost.”
—John Steinbeck (1902–1968)
“The night in prison was novel and interesting enough.... I found that even here there was a history and a gossip which never circulated beyond the walls of the jail. Probably this is the only house in the town where verses are composed, which are afterward printed in a circular form, but not published. I was shown quite a long list of verses which were composed by some young men who had been detected in an attempt to escape, who avenged themselves by singing them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)