“Sol Prendido” for Borderland Beat
Ramón Soto Valenzuela worked for the Sinaloa Cartel and died last Wednesday of a heart attack.
A heart attack was the cause of death of Ramón Soto Valenzuela, alias “El Doc”, operator of the Sinaloa Cartel’s Gente Nueva group in the city of Chihuahua, who maintained control of drug distribution in the area near Aquiles Serdán.
According to information from the State Attorney General’s Office (FGE), “El Doc” died on December 14 in the city of Parral. It also confirmed that the criminal leader had been operating for several years for the cartel founded by Joaquín Guzmán Loera, “El Chapo”, in the southern zone of the capital.
“El Doc”, originally from Parral, was an agent of the former State Attorney General’s Office (PGJE) until he left and joined the ranks of drug traffickers; he had a history of arrests for various crimes, including violations of the Federal Law of Firearms and Explosives and organized crime.
On May 18, 2009, he was captured in his hometown by members of the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) along with six other individuals identified as Francisco B. G., Jesús Manuel Y. P., Héctor C. H., Irma Leticia Ch. C., José Ramón S. R. and Fernando R. N.
The arrest was achieved thanks to a special operation carried out in the Kennedy neighborhood in Hidalgo del Parral, which was extended to another address in the Centro neighborhood. Three kilos 978 grams of cocaine, eight kilos 680 grams of marijuana, 308,540 pesos and 402 dollars were seized, as well as two .223 caliber weapons, an AK-47, a 5.56 millimeter rifle, five handguns of 9 millimeter, .22, .38 and .45 caliber, in addition to 522 cartridges of various calibers and seven magazines.
They were all handed over to the Federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR), which presented them before a federal judge on charges of usurpation of functions, operations with resources of illicit origin, organized crime and crimes against health, violation of the Federal Firearms and Explosives Law, but only managed to have them sentenced to prison for the last two.
After his release, the criminal leader began a dispute with the plaza bosses in the capital to take control of drug sales, taking advantage of the split of various factions of the Sinaloa Cartel caused by the murder of Manuel Arzola Campos, alias “Don Meny”, on July 2, 2018 in the parking lot of a shopping center on the De la Juventud ring road.
From that moment on, “El Doc” managed to position himself in the sector bordering the municipality of Aquiles Serdán and, although the Prosecutor’s Office had identified him as one of the generators of violence in the city, to date he had no outstanding arrest warrants.
