At 9 p.m. on May 8, 2008, patrons of the City Club in the Tres Ríos Urban Development in Culiacán heard what sounded like a bomb blast. It wasn’t a single explosion; it was five hundred AK-47 rifle shots and a bazooka blast against the parking lot wall. In less than three minutes, the body of Edgar Guzman López, the eldest son of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman Loera, lay on the asphalt next to those of César Ariel Loera and Arturo Meza Cázares.
They had been executed at point-blank range by an armed cell. The entire city ground to a halt. For days, the streets were deserted. The police didn’t appear at the scene until it was all over. Neighbors spoke of a war, but no one knew for sure who had started it.
According to the account written by Vicente Zambada Niebla, son of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, in the documents that formed the basis of Anabel Hernández’s book, *The Traitor*, the attack was not the result of a confrontation between rival cartels. What happened that night was an internal shooting error within the Sinaloa Cartel itself.
According to “El Vicentillo’s” testimony, the death of “El Chapo’s” favorite son was not retaliation by the Beltrán Leyva organization, as official and journalistic accounts maintained for years, but rather the consequence of a botched operation by the armed wing commanded by Gonzalo Inzunza Inzunza, alias “Macho Prieto,” the same hitman who for years served as “El Mayo” Zambada’s shield and spearhead.
