Postop drugs killed Carrillo, officials say

Mexican kingpin may have been murdered

By ANDREW DOWNIE
Copyright 1997 Special to the Chronicle

MEXICO CITY Amado Carrillo Fuentes, Mexico's most powerful
drug lord, may have been murdered by the intravenous
administration of postoperative drugs, the Mexican Federal
Attorney General's Office said.

The reputed billionaire head of the Ciudad Juarez drug cartel
died July 11 in a Mexico City hospital, shortly after having
spent eight hours receiving liposuction and plastic surgery that
Mexican and U.S. antinarcotics officials said was aimed at
changing his appearance to evade law enforcement officers.

Carrillo died after receiving medication that caused his
respiratory system to shut down, the office said, citing a
battery of tests carried out on his organs by forensic scientists
at the country's top military hospital.

"As a result of the tests ... it is concluded that Amado Carrillo
Fuentes died as a consequence of depression in the respiratory
centers caused by the residual presence of anaesthetic agents
(Fentanest and Diprivam) triggered by the depressant and nerving
effects of Midasolam (Dormicum)," the office said in a statement.

The report confirms news reports that said medical staff at the
Santa Monica clinic had injected Carrillo with a medicine called
Dormicum against the advice of doctors present. The reports led
many to believe Carrillo, 42, was murdered. Carrillo's mother and
others close to the family had said he died of a heart attack.

The attorney general's office did not speculate on whether the
administration of Dormicum and the other drugs was a deliberate
attempt to kill the capo or whether it was a mistake by hospital
staff.

"The Federal Attorney General's Office continues with
investigations to determine if the administration of this
medicine (Dormicum) that caused the death of Amado Carrillo
Fuentes was intentional or was due to imprudence, inexperience,
or a lack of knowledge by the people in charge of his
(recovery)," the office added.

Carrillo's death has shocked and intrigued a country that during
the last two years came to identify him as the most feared drug
lord of the 1990s. The nephew of a former drug capo from Sinaloa,
Carrillo rose through the ranks to become an almost legendary
figure.

At the height of his powers he made $200 million a week exporting
cocaine and heroin from his homeland to the United States, anti
narcotics officials estimated. In the mid1990s he won the alias
Lord of the Skies because of his pioneering use of large jets to
transport cocaine from Colombia to Mexico.

The statement about his death was released Friday night, just
hours after police arrested a man wanted in connection with the
drugrelated killing of a newspaper journalist in the northern
border town of San Luis Rio Colorado.

State police detained Rodolfo Arroyo Palacios and accused him of
shooting Benjamin Flores, the outspoken columnist and editor of
the town's La Prensa paper.

The state attorney general told newspapers that Tuesday's killing
was ordered by the brother of a jailed drug trafficker of
Carrillo's Juarez cartel. The trafficker was reportedly angry at
stories written by Flores.

Flores was one of the area's senior reporters and was best known
for the stories and columns he wrote about the drug trafficking
in and around the desert town.

Andrew Downie is a freelance writer based in Mexico City.