Global Courant
Byron Esteban and Luis Fernando, whose surnames are Hernández Carillo, were held in the preventive detention center for minor crimes and misdemeanors for men in zone 18, annex B, from February and May 2023. The former was in prison for murder and attempted murder, while the latter for the crime of media facilitation (related to drug trafficking), according to the records of the General Directorate of the Penitentiary System (DGSP).
The Specialized Criminal Investigation Division (Deic) of the National Civil Police (PNC) considers that the incident is related to a settling of accounts for the retail sale of cocaine. The Hernández Carrillo brothers led a retail drug distribution network on the streets of Guatemala City and the metropolitan area and were involved, according to official investigations, in a drug rampage before being imprisoned.
The brothers were murdered by two prisoners who, according to authorities, were having a dispute in prison over the distribution of narcotics. Byron Esteban entered Annex B on February 18, 2023, while his brother, Luis Fernando, on May 26, 2023. The first was charged with murder, and the second with media facilitation, in accordance with the law against drug activity.
DGSP sources assure that both brothers were isolated in different sectors of Annex B. One in 2 and the other in 4. It was to these places that the murderers of both arrived to eliminate them. The official version is that it was a reckoning for the drug bust that they had carried out before going to jail.
Findings and hypotheses about the crime
According to the PNC, Luis Fernando Hernández Carillo, 41, was murdered by the prisoner, Byron Darío Mazariegos Duarte, alias Ántrax, 37, who is being held for the crime of murder. An electronic scan test was performed on the subject’s hands and clothing he was wearing to determine if he had used a firearm, which came back positive. He was indicted for this new crime.
This subject is also saddled with the death of the acting deputy director of Annex B, Gerbin Rodolfo García Toj, 36 years old, and the prison agent, Carlos Pérez Guarchaj, 35. García Toj had worked for the Penitentiary System (SP) for five years, while Pérez Guarchaj had worked for 16 years.
Alias Ántrax was transferred preventively to the Matamoros prison in zone 1 of the capital. This first incident occurred on Sunday, July 23 at around 12:30 p.m. inside Annex B. At the scene, the authorities found a 9.19 caliber pistol, Diamond Back frame, registration YL3180, two chargers, and two useful cartridges with which they presumably committed the crimes. Plus seven casings and two cell phones.
Byron Esteban Hernández Carrillo was allegedly killed by 41-year-old Hans Gener Ortiz Salazar. The subject was captured by the SP security chief assigned to that prison, who turned him over to the PNC. They seized a pistol with which he shot the other prisoner more than five times until he died.
The weapon Ortiz Salazar allegedly used to commit the crime is a Diamond Back Firearms pistol, YL3178 series, 9.19 caliber, with a charger and no ammunition.
Ortiz Salazar was being held in sector 3 and went to sector 4 to kill Hernández Carrillo with whom, according to the DEIC investigation, he had had problems for three years over the retail sale of cocaine. The authorities consider that the subjects continued to have control of the sale of narcotics within Annex B, but also with other people at liberty who distributed cocaine at retail in the streets of the capital.
