El Chapo: Drug Lord’s Son Ovidio Guzmán Escapes Arrest After Overpowering Mexican Police

Violence broke out in northern Mexico after the Mexican security forces seized one of the sons of jailed drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

Ovidio Guzmán López was arrested during a routine patrol in the city of Culiacán.

Video footage revealed heavily-armed men firing at the police, with cars, bodies and burning barricades strewn on the road.

Officials said police withdrew without Guzmán in their custody to avoid further further unrest.

Alfonso Durazo Mexico’s security minister, told Reuters that a patrol of National Guard militarised police came under intense fire from outside the house where they had located Guzmán, forcing them to retreat from the building for their own safety and “to recover calm in the city”.

Report from a lawyer for the Guzmán family confirmed that, “Ovidio is alive and free.”

According to Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador he would hold a meeting with his security cabinet to review the uprising.