MEXICO CITY — This week, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, head of the Sinaloa drug cartel, escaped from the Mexican prison where he was being held. Now, the Mexican government has released footage showing the moment he fled.
In his last moments as Mexico’s most important prisoner, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán paces his cell, past his single bunk with rumpled sheets, the plastic water jugs on the floor.
He seems particularly interested in what’s behind the waist-high wall of the shower stall, as he keeps bending down to look at the floor.
The escape was bizarrely elaborate: a mile-long tunnel was built about 30 feet below the shower in Guzmán’s cell, and the tunnel reportedly had a “motorcycle on rails” system, used either for construction or as a means for Guzmán’s escape.
Eventually, the escape route released Guzmán at a construction site in a nearby town.
This wasn’t the first such prison break for the drug lord, either: Guzmán escaped from a prison in 2001, apparently on a laundry cart.
