Andrés Escobar’s name returned to international headlines this week after Colombia’s President, Gustavo Petro, said a man he described as allegedly tied to the 1994 killing was shot dead in Mexico.
Petro said on Friday that Santiago Gallón—whom he described as an alleged drug trafficker—had been killed. Petro wrote on X that Gallón had allegedly killed Escobar, saying the killing “destroyed the country’s international image.” Petro’s statement linked a decades-old crime tied to soccer’s biggest stage to violence that officials say continues to move across borders.
Mexico’s state prosecutor’s office for the state of Mexico, which surrounds Mexico City, confirmed that it found a body believed to be Gallón on Wednesday in Huixquilucan, a municipality outside the capital. The office said the body was undergoing forensic examination to confirm identity.
The 1994 killing that Escobar became known for was tied to his performance during the World Cup in the United States. Days after Colombia’s national team, considered a favorite that year, lost in an upset to the United States, Escobar was shot several times outside a disco in Medellin.
Escobar was shot on July 2, 1994, the Associated Press reported, and the shooting involved Humberto Muñoz Castro, who the account said was Gallón’s driver. The report said Muñoz Castro shot Escobar after being harangued about Escobar’s own goal.
Muñoz Castro was later arrested and confessed to the killing. The report said he had connections to a powerful Colombian cartel, was sentenced to 43 years in prison, and served only 11 years after refusing to implicate his bosses.
The AP report did not say what role, if any, Mexican authorities believe Gallón played, but it described a sequence in which officials in Colombia tied the original violence to organized criminal connections and, in Petro’s account, linked Gallón’s death to the unresolved aftermath of the Escobar case.