Pablo Escobar cartel hit man known as ‘Popeye’ dies in Colombian hospital

Jhon Jairo Velasquez Vasquez, one of the most notorious hit men for Colombian cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar, is dead.

Nicknamed “Popeye,” a sobriquet he earned during an apprenticeship with the Colombian Navy because of a physical resemblance to the muscular, spinach-eating cartoon character sailor, was a feared member of the Medellin cartel.

Velasquez, who once confessed to 300 assassinations by his own hand and coordinating thousands more, was sentenced to a 30-year prison term for the assassination of Colombian presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan Sarmiento in August 1989.

Later that year, Popeye was linked, with Escobar’s cartel, to an Avianca plane bombing that killed 110 people – all 107 on board the plane as it travelled from Bogota to the western city of Cali, and three on the ground, the National Post reported.

But he died not in the bullet-riddled way of many hit men but rather by stomach cancer in a Bogota hospital on Thursday. His death was confirmed by Colombia’s National Penitentiary and Prison Institute, CBS News reported.

Velasquez was 57. He had been hospitalised since New Year’s Eve with esophageal cancer that metastasised to his stomach, The New York Post reported.