Rafael Caro Quintero Arrested: What did Rafael Caro Quintero do?

Mexican drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero was arrested by Mexico’s navy on Friday, July 16 2022 in a law enforcement coup that cost 14 military personnel their lives when a helicopter used in the mission crashed.

Before the Black Hawk chopper came down, Marines flushed out Caro Quintero with a bloodhound in a remote corner of the northwestern state of Sinaloa, one of Mexico’s drug-trafficking heartlands.

According to a Mexican official, the arrest occurred in the same week that President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador met with US Vice President Joe Biden in Washington.

Rafael Caro Quintero was wanted by the FBI for the kidnapping of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, Camarena’s pilot Alfredo Zavala Avelar, American writer John Clay Walker, and dentistry student Alberto Radelat in 1985.

Caro Quintero was a wanted fugitive in Mexico, the United States, and several other countries. The US offered a $20 million reward for information leading to his capture, the highest value among fugitives on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.