DEA chief confident escaped drug lord will be found again
Jul 17, 2015, 9:24 AM
In this July 16, 2015, photo, a Federal Police shows a reward notice for information leading to the capture of drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, who made his escape from the Altiplano maximum security prison via an underground tunnel, in Almoloya, west of Mexico City. The Drug Enforcement Administration’s deputy administrator says he is confident one of the world’s most-wanted drug traffickers will be captured again after a brazen weekend escape from a maximum-security Mexican prison. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
(AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Drug Enforcement Administration’s top agent hasn’t really slept since he got word Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman had sneaked out of maximum-security prison in Mexico though a mile-long tunnel that opened beneath his cell’s shower nearly a week ago.
DEA’s deputy administrator Jack Riley said Thursday that the last week has been a flurry of work speaking with his Mexican counterparts and helping direct U.S. efforts to capture one of the world’s most prolific and violent drug lords for the third time in 15 years.
“This guy caused me one of the best days and worst days of my life in a span of a year,” Riley told The Associated Press. “We are doing everything we can to track him down, much like we did a year or so ago when we hooked him.”
Guzman was arrested in February 2014, more than a decade after his last escape from a Mexican prison in 2001.
Before taking over as DEA’s operations chief in Washington last year, Riley spent four years in Chicago tracking Guzman and continuing to build a growing criminal case against the drug lord. After Guzman’s arrest in February 2014, authorities in Chicago, including Riley, called for his extradition to the United States to face trial on a litany of drug trafficking and other charges.
The Mexican government said late Thursday that the U.S. had filed an extradition request to Guzman about 2
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