MORELIA: The bullet-riddled body of the founder of Mexico’s once-mighty La Familia Michoacana drug cartel was found on Monday alongside three other men on a road in the country’s violent west.

The body of Carlos Rosales Mendoza, alias “El Tisico” (“The Turbecular”), was identified and claimed by his children, an official in the Michoacan state prosecutor’s office said.

The four bodies were found with bullet wounds near a toll booth on a road in Michoacan that leads to the Pacific coast, authorities said. Rosales was arrested in 2004 and spent a decade in prison until his release last year.

He was originally a member of the Milenio gang, but later collaborated with the Zetas drug cartel to fight against his former criminal group in a key region for the production and shipment of narcotics.

Published in Dawn, December 30th, 2015