“HEARST”, “Socalj”, “Enojon”, & “Char” for Borderland Beat
El 22, a Sinaloa Cartel – Chapitos figure, was recently shot to death inside a Culiacan medical clinic in one of the most hotly discussed incidents of the year.
Warning: Videos and images below this point may be graphic.
The Funeral
During the last few days of September 2023, videos and images from a lavish funeral being held in Sinaloa were shared online. Large, expensive funeral wreaths (called coronas in Mexico) arrived.
The biggest of the wreaths featured hundreds of red roses, each one labeled with a ribbon featuring the person who sent it, and the names were some of the biggest names in the Sinaloa Cartel.
Wreaths were sent by Ivan Guzman and Jesus Alfredo Guzman, and their father Joaquin Guzman Loera.
A red rose arrangement from Kevin Alonso Gil Acosta, alias “El 200”, Ivan’s “secretario”, was also featured, flanked by a wreath from Nestor Perez Salas, alias “El Nini”.
Singer Panchito Arredondo, who is known for his ballads celebrating cartel figures, uploaded a photo to social media of his own contribution to the funeral – another large, red rose wreath.
Videos showing the names on these floral arrangements confirmed what had been rumored – that a high-level Sinaloa Cartel figure known as “El 22” had been killed.
Edgar Isabel Román Martínez, “El 22” was the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel – Chapitos group “La Numerada”, which originates from the Sinaloan town of Guamúchil.
Members of the group lean into the symbology of numbers, utilizing them in their embellished firearms and social media posts. They can sometimes be seen wearing vests which read “FEH22”, for Fuerza Especiales Hermano 22, or Brother 22 Special Forces.
La Numerada is loosely associated with the former bodyguard of Chapo, Orso Ivan Gastélum Cruz, alias “Cholo Vago”.
Now, Cholo Vago is no longer in Mexico, having been extradited to the US in April 2023, but a group of his followers who refer to themselves as “Cholo Vagos” continue to operate in the Guamúchil area. They were notably mentioned on radio during the second attempt to arrest Ovidio Guzman.
The Basic Facts of the Incident
What happened in this incident is hotly disputed and there are very different versions of events being reported by reputable newspapers. We are going to cover the basic facts of the incident, then review the video footage of it and then, we’ll cover the different tellings of what happened.
The following are the basic, largely undisputed facts:
At some point in time, one or two patients were admitted to Clínica Hospital Culiacán. The clinic is a relatively small medical facility, located in the northern part of Culiacán city.
One of the patients admitted had suffered a gunshot wound to the head, according to Sara Bruna Quiñónez Estrada, the Attorney General of Sinaloa.
The clinic is required to inform law enforcement when gunshot wound victims arrive so law enforcement can question the victim and determine if a crime occurred. Attorney General Quiñónez Estrada states that the clinic did not report this patient’s gunshot wound.
The patient was likely shot during a cartel related conflict and they did not want to be questioned by police, so they likely either bribed or intimidated clinic staff into not reporting it to police. This patient had bodyguards protecting them within the clinic.
Most tellings allege that these injuries occurred during a September 23 shooting in the Badiraguato mountains.
On Thursday, September 28, 2023, at approximately 8:30 pm, a shooting broke out within the clinic. This shooting left 3 men dead and one bystander, a woman, injured. One of the dead men was Dr. Otniel Everardo Montoya, who was not involved in the shooting and was merely struck in the crossfire of bullets.
Law enforcement arrives and they sweep the building for gunmen. Whether they found any is not reported. Staff were evacuated from the building by law enforcement.
A male patient of the clinic and the injured female bystander were sent in separate ambulances to the larger Culiacan General Hospital.
At the General Hospital, something occurred with the male clinic patient and he ended up being shot. He died from this gunshot injury.
The four men killed were:
Dr. Otniel Everardo Montoya
Edgar Isabel Román Martínez, alias “El 22”
(His full name comes from Luz Noticias. His alias comes from Riodoce.)
José Abel Román “B”, Edgar’s cousin
(Edgar and Jose being cousins comes from Cafe Negro Portal. The “Roman B” comes from the initials of his name (and Edgar’s initials) that were featured in this tribute video.)
Omar Silvano “N”
Video 01
Surveillance cameras within the Clínica Hospital Culiacán captured part of the shooting. The death of one of four men is shown in the footage below.
In order to keep track of the various armed men seen running throughout the building, we’ve broken down the footage into some key sections and labeled the movements of those on screen.
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Based on the surveillance footage video and the photos of the deceased; we can determine the connections between several of the men involved. The three men seen together primarily in the lobby (including the deceased man in the blue shirt) are clearly allies and may be fighting against the man in the long black shirt, seen in the video.
It is believed, based on the shoes of the deceased man with the long black dress shirt, that he is a different person than the man seen in the video. The connection of the deceased man with either the group of gunmen or the single individual shooter is not known at this time.
Approximately 30 minutes later, law enforcement officers arrived at the clinic, responding to the 911 call which reported the shooting.
Surveillance footage of them clearing the building of gunmen and evacuating civilians can be seen below.
Pictures of the Aftermath
Images of some of the deceased men found either in the clinic or in the hospital were later leaked online.
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Versions of What Happened
Now, who each person is and what led to certain incidents changes with each telling.
The first version of events was told on September 29, by Sinaloa’s head of Public Security, Gerardo Mérida Sánchez.
He said gunmen entered the clinic to target one person. A shootout occurred, which killed three people. A man was arrested at the clinic, however, he was found to be injured from the battle, so he was escorted by State Police officers to Culiacan General Hospital.
Both Luz Noticias and Cafe Negro Portal quote Mérida Sánchez as saying “When he was taken to the hospital, the State Police accompanied him – seeing that he was wounded by a gunshot, they accompanied him. And our officer that was armed had the weapon on hand. According to the police officer, they struggled for that weapon and that is when the firearm detonated.”
He said the person who was arrested and then shot in the scuffle with the officer was the original target of the attack at the clinic.
On October 2, the Governor of Sinaloa added and clarified some parts of this story.
Governor Rubén Rocha Moya said “The one who was there [the patient at the clinic] had been shot in Badiraguato and from there, his adversaries decided to come and finish him off. And they went to the hospital and the tragedy occurred.”
Based on comments by Governor Rocha and further inquiry, the newspaper El Universal wrote “two armed men entered the clinic to finish off a patient from Badiraguato named Omar Silvano ‘N’, who was admitted with a gunshot wound, but the hitmen did not achieve their goal [of killing him], since he had two bodyguards.”
So, to put it simply, in this version we’ve got one target in the clinic, named Omar, who was attacked by hitmen who wanted to finish him off. After the shooting, Omar was arrested and taken to a hospital by police officers. At some point Omar tried to wrestle an officer for his firearm and the gun.
On October 2, Luz Noticias presented a different version. They wrote that at “around 9:00 pm, a 911 report was received which said an armed group entered [a clinic] to murder two men who were in intensive care.”
Note that this version alleges that two patients were the target of the attack, which is different from the statements by the Governor and Secretary of Security, which claimed there was one target.
Excelsior and Vanguardia also alleges there were multiple targets and they actually named these targets.
Vanguardia writes “two armed people entered the site seeking to murder patients who had apparently been wounded after a shooting in the Badiraguato mountain range. These men were identified as Luis ‘ N ’, 31, and Adrián ‘ N ’, 30, who had apparently been injured on Saturday, September 23 in a confrontation.”
So, in this version, there were two targets at the clinic, Luis and Adrian.
Viva Voz presented a dramatically different version of events.
On September 30, they wrote “Sources close to the deceased commented that the shooting broke out after a confusion, since apparently the boss ‘El R22’ had come to pay the bill for the person who was being treated in the operating room.”
“And since they saw him armed they thought he was a gunman who was going to finish off the wounded man. ‘That’s the bad thing about not knowing the boss,’ said the source.”
They allege that El 22 was mistakenly shot and killed. They write that the man who shot El 22 was taken to the General Hospital and “when he was told that he had killed the boss, he took a guard’s gun and shot himself.”
So in this version, bodyguards for one injured person mistook El 22 for an enemy and they shot him. The man who killed El 22 was taken to the hospital and he committed suicide with a police officer’s gun when he realized what he had done.
During a press conference on October 4th,
Attorney General Quiñonez Estrada confirmed El 22 was not paying the hospital
bill of a patient but stated the individual who did was among the victims,
disputing the series of events reported by Viva Voz but aligning with their
investigation on the claims of two armed individuals who arrived at the clinic
to pay the medical bill of a patient suffering from a gunshot wound.
She described the person who was paying the medical bill as “the one who died at the General Hospital. I do not have the specific information, since there were three people who died and I do not remember exactly the name or where each one of them was from. One of the deceased did arrive to pay the bill, it is true, but it was not El 22.”
So, how do we make sense of all these different versions? Who were we watching in the surveillance footage? Who were the patients at the clinic and who was paying the medical bill?
The answers to these questions are going to vary depending on which version of events you find the most credible.
But let’s at least take a stab at identifying the dead men in the photos since we have photos of four deceased males and the names of four people who were killed.
There are multiple photos on social media showing the innocent man who was killed in the crossfire – Dr. Otniel Everardo Montoya.
Based on these photos, Dr. Otniel appears to match Deceased #01. His facial features match and the deceased appears to be wearing scrubs which were cut open by medical workers who were attempting to save him after he was shot.
We can also eliminate deceased #03 and #04 as potential matches for the doctor because both of those men appeared to be armed.
Deceased #02 appears to be naked. It seems likely that he was wearing some sort of gown and was being medically treated prior to his death. It’s unclear if the facility in the background of his photo shows the clinic or the General Hospital.
El Universal newspaper reported that the initial patient admitted to the clinic was Omar Silvano and that Omar was the man transferred to the General Hospital – who was later shot there, either by suicide or during a struggle with a police officer. Based on this, we thought Omar was the most likely identity of Deceased #02 but new comments from the Attorney General may now contradict this.
Deceased #03 is BLUE SHIRT MAN, who we watched die in the surveillance video. But what is BLUE SHIRT MAN’s real name? We guessed that he was Jose Abel Roman “B”, Edgar’s cousin, although it’s worth mentioning that he could also be Omar Silvano.
One thing that seems clear is that BLUE SHIRT MAN was not El 22 (Edgar Roman Martinez) – or any kind of cartel boss capable of paying for the medical bills, because the two hitmen barely seem to care when BLUE SHIRT MAN gets shot.
If he had been someone important within the Sinaloa Cartel, it’s likely the two men in the surveillance footage would have reacted differently.
Through the process of elimination, we arrived at Deceased #04 being Edgar Roman Martinez, or “El 22”.
Some Tiktoks made in memory of El 22 feature only the image of Deceased #04 and none of the others.
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Deceased #04 appears to be wearing a magazine holster on his belt, which would line up with the version of events where El 22 arrived at the clinic visibly armed – which alarmed the bodyguards. Deceased #04 was also wearing a face mask at the time of his death, which may have further obscured his identity, contributing to the mistaken identity.
The symbol on his baseball hat is largely indiscernible, although it may depict a pizza slice, which is a symbol used to show loyalty to CDS – Chapitos, or “Chapiza”.
Three cell phones were found near Deceased #04. Carrying multiple cell phones is a practice that some higher-level cartel figures engage in, however, there are plenty of street-level drug dealers who do the same, so it may not indicate anything.
We can, at least, determine that Deceased #04 was not LONG SLEEVES MAN from the surveillance footage, because LONG SLEEVES MAN had white soles on his shoes. LONG SLEEVES MAN does not appear to match any of the deceased so its presumed he escaped the incident.
This highlights a larger issue: multiple armed men in the surveillance footage are wholly unaccounted for. Law enforcement has made no appeals to the public asking for information on the shooters. In fact, authorities are quite tight lipped on the details – and when details are given, they seem to only add to a growing list of contradictory versions of what happened.
Sinaloan government officials have expressed their condolences to the family of Dr Otniel but they have not offered any reward for the shooters who killed him.
You’d be forgiven for mistaking their lack of interest in finding the shooters as the tacit expectation that some other group would find them and mete out justice.
Well… their version of justice. Justice for the killing of their men. A type of justice that’s only afforded to high-level narcos who are friendly with the bosses.
On September 28, 2023, Otniel Montoya, a doctor who was caring for the injured – a man embodying the spirit of the Hippocratic oath – was killed in Culiacan, Sinaloa.
Otniel’s life was snuffed out by cartel hitmen because he was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time.
There will be no justice for Otniel.
It makes you wonder… is it about time to ask all these mysterious benefactors paying their hitmens’ medical bills if they could show the same level of generosity to the doctors who are just doing their jobs – rather than carelessly slaughtering them and calling it collateral damage.
Sources: Los Noticieristas, El Universal, Tribuna, Riodoce, Cafe Negro Portal, Luz Noticias, Viva Voz
Video Sources: @vaganciadls, LAMERAVRG_13, Dareyadadls70, Halcon1072, XEVT FM