It was about 10:30 am on Sunday, February 10, 2002 when elements of the Ministerial Police chased five occupants of a white VW Beetle Sinaloa license plate number VFY 6068, mainly because they were circulating on the opposite direction at Rafael Buelna Avenue near the Zona Dorada.
The white VW Beetle was driven into the parking lot of a hotel where it was abandoned.
Then the occupants dispersed among the Bugambilias Street businesses.
Two of the occupants hid in a pharmacy where they tried to look as buying customers flipping through magazines while trying to go unnoticed.
Marcos Assemat Hernández and Sergio Reyes reached all the way to Tony's restaurant, where they were arrested moments later.
The shooting. Ángel Antonio Árias Torres, former commander of the state police, ran into someone who identified himself with a badge from the Attorney General's Office just meters before reaching the pharmacy. It was Jorge Perez Lopez; in reality was Ramon Arellano Felix.
Trying to take advantage of the moment when the police commander put his guard down, Ramon Arellano shoot him twice in the chest. The bullets did their part. When Ángel Antonio Arias Torres was falling mortally wounded, he reacted and fire back at the fake AFI agent, hitting him with a bullet straight in the head. The police commander maybe did not really know who he "swept away". Both bodies fell dead on the sidewalk outside a pharmacy.
The other subject that had accompanied Jorge Pérez López, Bernardo Rochín (Efrain Quintero Carrizona), tried to flee, but ran into a group of ministerial police who shot him as soon as he was in front of them; and although he was helped by Red Cross paramedics, he died minutes later aboard the ambulance. He was murdered they said.
The fourth man, Manuel López López, was arrested in the Plaza Gaviotas.
The memory. The smelled of gunpowder was fresh. They reported a shootout in the Golden Zone.
It was Carnival Sunday. The reporter arrived first and took pictures of the two dead lying on a sidewalk. I did not know what it was. "When I arrived, the police prevented me from doing my job. It gave me a bad feeling and I thought it was something real bad.
I thought they had killed an important person, "said an interviewee who lived the moment on its eyes when getting off the Volkswagen he was driving down to cover the police news section for Nota Roja for Mazatlan El DEBATE newspaper. He said as time went by he wrote down what happened. When I discover who the dead men was, I was amazed to know it was an important person, said the interviewee.
"In all the police events we take a picture of the face of the person and then we work on the photo composition".
The location has changed. Today its called Bugambilias street and Gaviotas corner, but before it was Rodolofo T. Loaiza in the Golden Zone, there is a hotel there now.
At that time there was a pharmacy in the corner and some other businesses. It was a calm and quiet place. And over the years these institutions were demolished to expand the hotel.
Years later, after the death of Ramon Arellano, the corner of Bugambilias and Gulls has served as narcotours for Pulmonias Taxi drivers, Safaris and Charioteers. There was not a person who will visit the harbor and did not want to know where Ramón die never to rise again.
In fact, even the sidewalk was remodeled in its entirety. The same crime scene changed sharply.
The rest is history. After the death of one most famous drug kingpins renowned worldwide, a notorious leader of the Arellano Felix cartel, has in fact ceased to be the most frequently mentioned.
Gradually time has passed, and what happened in the Mazatlan port in 2002 was apparently forgotten, like all the deceased and detainees. Sometimes to raise the issue between those who lived through those times, there are dozens of unanswered questions. Some police officers who were involved in the arrest of the gunmen, and the subsequent confiscation of strong arms cache, have said that they never imagined being in front of the dead body of Ramon Arellano Felix, who among the drug trafficking world perhaps he won the respect of some and the enmity of many.
The man who according to those narcocorridos was the safety and fear of the cartel, will impose fear no more. Ramon Arellano Felix became another statistic. Everyone shouted for days on the news: Ramon Arellano Felix, was dead.