Quito, May 9 (EFE) .- Three men, including a teenager, were arrested in Ecuador as the main suspects of the murder of a military occurred on Thursday in the city of Guayaquil, according to the Ecuadorian police and the Navy through their official channels.
The detainees, which allegedly are part of a criminal gang called ‘Mafia 18’, were also seized a vehicle, a motorcycle, fourteen bullet cartridges, three mobile phones and clothing.
On Thursday, the Navy had reported the arrest of adolescents who “would have found fundamental evidence that would link them with murder,” the institution said.
The victim was identified as Sergeant Second Domingo Reasco, whose circumstances of death were not detailed by the Navy when expressing regret for his loss.
“This is a young man who gave 17 years to the Navy of Ecuador, standing out as a worker faithful to his principles and respectful of his superiors and colleagues,” the military institution just pointed out.
According to local media, Reasco was riddled by two people aboard a motorcycle when he arrived at his home in a populous sector in southern Guayaquil.
Likewise, the Ecuadorian Navy said that “it will not rest until all those responsible for this vile fact that seriously affects an Ecuadorian family are apprehended.”
This homicide is recorded within the framework of the state of ‘internal armed conflict’ decreed since 2024 by the president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, to face the scale of violence of the organized crime bands that has placed Ecuador at the head of Latin America in the homicide index, with an average of an hour murder since the beginning of 2025.
Noboa has decreed successive states of exception in which he has arranged for the Armed Forces to participate in operations against organized crime and take care of prisons control, epicenters of the crisis of violence in Ecuador being controlled by these criminal structures that began to call “terrorists.” EFE
