A recent court hearing in Colombia has pulled back the curtain on a chilling case of mistaken identity. During a hearing to formalize the arrest and charges against a 32-year-old suspect known as ‘Tony,’ originally from the coastal city of Barranquilla, prosecutors revealed the existence of ‘Los gladiadores’ (The Gladiators), a hitman network with roots on Colombia’s Caribbean coast that has been operating in the capital, Bogotá.
According to prosecutors, at least six members of the group communicated through a WhatsApp chat where they coordinated the assassination of a wealthy gold-mining businessman. But the hitmen got their target wrong. Instead, they killed Gustavo Andrés Aponte Fonnegra, a rice-industry entrepreneur, as he left a Bodytech gym in northern Bogotá on February 11.
The case is now in the hands of the same prosecutor overseeing two other high-profile investigations in Colombia: the assassination of Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay and the poisoning of several young girls with thallium, a highly toxic heavy metal. The overlap underscores growing concern over organized violence-for-hire networks operating with apparent ease in major Colombian cities.
Investigators are now working to determine how a case of mistaken identity led to a businessman’s death outside a gym in broad daylight, and what it reveals about the reach of contract-killing operations in Bogotá.
To read the full investigation, visit El Tiempo’s original report.
Image: Si1very, BY 2.0 (via Openverse).