Óscar Noé Medina Gonzalezalias “The Panu”was murdered while having dinner with his family on the night of December 21, 2025 Restaurant Luau, in Zona Rosa from Mexico City.
The attack, staged with precision and brutality – with dozens of shots that immediately took his life – put an end to a criminal career marked by Power, violence and loyalty to Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazarthe leader of Los Chapitos.
Journalist Anabel Hernández in the latest chapter of her podcast anesthetic system, pointed out that El Panu he was not an easy subordinate or killers within the Los Chapitos criminal structure.
It was him close friend, comrade and above all the right arm of Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar. For more than a decade, El Panu was inseparable from the son of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán: “They were just as inseparable at endless parties as they were in bloody battles and drug trafficking,” the journalist mentions.
The relationship between the two was based on absolute trust. El Panu was considered essential to the rise of Los Chapitos and a key element in operations like that Expansion of fentanyl trafficking and the success of other operations, such as Culiacanazo.
Anabel recalls: “He and his armies in the service of Los Chapitos marched daily along the main streets of Culiacán…The caravans that El Panu ordered to patrol Culiacán as if it were private property, the private territory of Los Chapitos, were legendary.”
By returning to the sayings that Damaso Lopez Serranoalias “El Mini Lic,” Anabel Hernández said in an interview that El Panu shared the violence of the leader of Los Chapitos, the security chief He was distinguished by greater intelligence and cold-bloodedness.
One of the most graphic anecdotes told in the episode is the one that occurred in the episode Lucerna Hotel in Culiacan, when Iván Archivaldo, under the effects of hallucinogens, brutally beat a woman in a room and was about to kill her with a gun.
Apparently it was El Panu who quickly intervened, Ivan disarmed and prevented the woman from being murdered. The next day, according to the author, Guzmán Salazar thanked her for preventing the crime.
“It’s not that Óscar Noé Medina González was less violent than his boss, but No doubt he had more neurons. (…) Although they knew that they were protected, they knew that killing a woman in these conditions would result in a series of calls from the hotel management to the Culiacán police, and that was not good for anyone,” mentions the author of The Narco Lords.
Since then, El Panu He took the magazine out of his friend’s gun. as I watched him lose his mind, protecting both his boss and the cartel structure from irreversible scandal or senseless losses. Was the man who stopped the leader’s excesseswho acted with calculation and common sense when the boss’s passions and violence threatened to spiral out of control.
El Panu’s power was also expressed in his ability exercise extreme violence. Anabel Hernández documents his participation in acts of Torture and executions.
He says that one day a man was “thrown to a tiger, which left him torn to pieces, without a hand or genitals, according to the forensic report. In the end, someone took pity on him and gave him the coup de grace. During the torture, José Ángel Canobbio Inzunza, alias El Güero, El Panu and Raúl Carrasco, El Chore as well as El Nini, is said to have been present.”
In 2017El Panu took part alongside Iván Archivaldo, Alfredo Guzmán and El Nini Kidnapping and torture of two PGR agents. “One was deprived of his freedom upon his arrival in Culiacán and taken to a ranch in Iván in Navolato, where he was subjected to hours of brutal torture by the leader of Los Chapitos himself, who finally decided to shoot him in the head. The other officer was taken to the same place. The two brothers watched Panu and Nini interrogated him and tortured him by screwing a corkscrew into his body.Tear off pieces of meat when removing and Put chili on the woundsuntil El Chapito finally “took pity on him” and executed him.”
El Panu’s influence within Los Chapitos extended beyond the containment of Iván Archivaldo. Anabel Hernández points this out It was he who identified, recruited and trained Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, alias “El Nini”, one of the group’s most bloodthirsty killers.
He knew how to take advantage of his brutality and cold-bloodedness by giving him something his first job as an assassin and positioned him as a key figure in the armed structure, making him a “drug trafficker without scruples and limits… It was he who gave him the first job as an assassin and knew how to exploit his brutality.”
in businessThe Panu was much more than just an executive arm. He was a key player in Los Chapitos’ foray into the fentanyl trade, one of the main reasons the United States government made an offer Four million reward for information leading to his capture.
Organized and led strategic meetings to start the market blue M30 tabletspresented the product to dozens of young people in Culiacán and distributed thousands of free pills to attract new consumers. Thanks to his vision and logistical capacity, the organization was able to multiply its profits and consolidate new trade routes to the United States.
“Then it was the beginning of 2018 when an elegant restaurant in Culiacán closed its doors to host a unique business convention that would revolutionize the drug market and multiply the power of the Sinaloa cartel. On behalf of Los Chapitos, they called El Güerito, El Panu and Jaime Fernández, aka Jim, to the meeting,” he says.
“…The young people who started selling the glass made by Los Chapitos had to start exchanging the product for the M30. And like good criminal dealers, they gave each participant in the meeting five thousand pills, which in turn they had to distribute for free, and once the customer was hooked, they began to squeeze him out, bringing in juicy profits.”
At the end of the episode, Anabel Hernández interprets El Panu’s recent execution as a symbol of the beginning of the end for Los Chapitos. In his words: “In the twilight of the Los Chapitos Empire Panu’s death is almost a coup de grace.”
He emphasizes that the death of El Panu means not only the end of a crime legend, but also the loss of the most intelligent and loyal operator who protected both Iván Archivaldo and the structure of Los Chapitos even in their most critical moments.
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