Video made public Monday shows heavily armed Mexican marines exchanging gunfire and hurling hand grenades at drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s henchmen during the deadly raid that led to his recapture after six months on the run.
One of the commandos is heard screaming, “They got me! They got me!” in Spanish, prompting another to yell, “Let the grenades loose!” in the video footage broadcast by Mexico’s Televisa.
The wounded marine survived the furious gun battle early Friday in the city of Los Mochis, but five of El Chapo’s goons died. Other henchmen were detained.
The two-minute helmet-cam video, which is part of a 15-minute recording, shows the special forces — clad in a combination of tactical gear and sports wear — searching in closets and in bedrooms for Mexico’s most-wanted criminal amid sounds of explosions and gunfire.
One marine told Televisa that there was a man with a grenade launcher ready to fire when the compound was stormed by 17 marines.
El Chapo gave the forces the slip by opening a doorway hidden behind a mirror and descending into a tunnel leading to the city’s drains.
It took the marines 90 minutes to find the tunnel entrance, giving Guzman a crucial head start.
The lever to open the reinforced door behind the mirror was concealed in the light of the dressing room.
Marines found another hole beneath a refrigerator, but it proved to be a red herring, the apparent beginnings of a project to build another escape route. They also found two women cowering in one of the home’s five bathrooms.
El Chapo was later nabbed by Mexican federal police and is awaiting extradition to the United States, where he has been indicted on drug and murder charges in federal courts in Brooklyn, Chicago and elsewhere.
The head of the infamous Sinaloa Cartel had been on the lam since escaping last year from a maximum-security prison through an elaborate tunnel outfitted with a motorcycle on rails.
With Post Wire Services