The Chief of Tijuana of a state elite police unit that seeks American fugitives in Mexico, nicknamed “The Gringo hunters”, was killed in a shooting on Wednesday while trying a prisoner who escaped from the center of California.
Abigail Esparza Reyes, 33, served as head of the International Link Group in Tijuana for the Citizen Security Force of California de Low, or FESC, during the last eight years. The unit often works in close collaboration with the counterparts in the application of the San Diego Law.
“For the family and loved ones of the officer Abigail, we recognize his courage and dedication to the service of his state,” said the governor of Baja California, Marina del Pilar, in a statement published on social networks. “Abigail’s life will be honored and his death is not unpunished.”
The team had been looking for César Hernández, 34, a prisoner who escaped from custody in Delano in December after arriving at the Superior Court of Kern County, Mexican officials said Thursday.
Hernández was sentenced to 80 years of life with the possibility of probation for the murder of the first day in Los Angeles County, according to the California corrections and rehabilitation department in 2019.
It was located in a house in the neighborhood of Tijuana of Brotherhood of Barcelona, and lasted an attempt to judge it, Esparza was shot and injured, authorities said. Esparza was urgently taken to the Red Cross in Tijuana, where he died.
Several law enforcement agencies, including FESC, Tijuana Police and the National Guard, were deployed in the area, where it was believed that the suspect had locked himself inside the house. But he managed to flee. No one else was found in the house, authorities said.
The images of the security camera obeyed by various media of Tijuana show a man, believed he was the suspect, fleeing only underwear and changing in the jacket of a yellow worm. A multipleGENCIES search is being carried out to find the suspect, Mexican officials said Thursday.
Gene. Lureano Carrillo, director of the State Police, expressed her condolences to the loved ones of Esparza, saying that “he will be remembered and honored by his courage, passion and dedication to police work, in which the direct role in the juice and time were were and were and were and highlighted countries.”
Esparza grew up in Tijuana and had dreamed secretly with becoming a police officer, according to a 2022 profile of the unit in the Washington Post.