The leader of the gang that attacked Ciro Gómez Leyva is sentenced to 14 years in prison

This Tuesday, a judge sentenced Armando Escarcega, alias, to 14 years in prison. The modelthe leader of the criminals who attacked Mexican journalist Ciro Gómez Leyva in December 2022, as reported by different national media and reported by the communicator himself. The judge’s decision is made for the attempted homicide against Gómez Leyva, and is added to the six other convictions that surrounded the case, including those of Héctor Martínez, The Bartconsidered the author of the material, sentenced to 14 years in prison; or that Pedro Gómez, Poolat 12, for having blocked the journalist’s passage during the attack.

“With this, the entire group of seven men who formed the so-called execution cell is condemned,” Gómez Leyva emphasized in an online statement. The attack took place on December 15, 2022, when Gómez Leyva was returning home after presenting the evening news on Imagen Televisión. A motorcycle with two people on board chased him through the town hall of Coyoacán, south of Mexico City. He brought it forward. One of them pulled out his gun, pointed it, fired and fled. The scene ended without the journalist being injured. His car was armored.

Judge Edmundo Manuel Perisquia also fined El Patrón approximately 45,000 pesos. “A conviction is pronounced against Armando Escárcega Valdéz, determining his responsibility for the crimes of attempted homicide and aggravated criminal association, with a sentence of 14 years in prison,” declared the magistrate in the opinion collected The Universal.

In the list of sentences there were also four other women whom a judge sentenced to three years and 11 months of probation in 2024. A sentence which, like that of Pool and Bart, was carried out according to an abbreviated procedure that they themselves requested before the FGR, which in turn submitted the request to the judge. The conspiracy led to a total of 14 arrests in the case: 13 in Mexico and one more in the United States. The journalist highlighted in an interview with this newspaper that, since April 2024, El Bart and El Pool have accused each other of having received instructions from the New Generation Cartel of Jalisco.

Two years after the attack, El Bart spoke with activist Saskia Niño de Rivera in Santa Martha Acatitla prison. There, he assured that he would have repeated the attack. “But with more caution,” he noted. In that same conversation, the hitman claimed to have murdered more than 20 people. The journalist admitted that when he lives in Mexico (he currently resides in Madrid), “the fear is always there.” “I know that when I’m in Mexico, I’m living in a very dangerous and very violent country, and that if it’s really the CJNG that’s behind this, I’ll never know if they thought enough about what they did or if they’re going to try again.”