The Moment Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman Escaped From Prison
The drug lord traveled to freedom through a highly sophisticated tunnel.
— -- Newly-released surveillance video shows Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman before his escape from his prison cell -- after which he traveled to freedom through a mile-long, highly sophisticated tunnel.
In the surveillance footage recorded Saturday, Guzman can be seen pacing back and forth.
He then walks to the shower and toilet area of his cell, bends down behind a low dividing wall and vanishes.
Guzman successfully dodged two surveillance cameras -- one mounted outside his cell’s entrance, the other a closed-circuit lens inside. Mexican officials concede that the drug lord exploited the obvious blind spot, his shower stall, which was deliberately set up to protect the inmate’s privacy.
He also removed a tracking bracelet prior to the escape.
ABC News’ Gio Benitez got a look inside the tunnel used in the escape. The tunnel, ventilated and well-lit, was built to accommodate Guzman’s height -- 5-foot-6 -- and runs nearly a mile underground from the shower stall to a half-built house used to hide the dirt pulled out of the ground to make the tunnel. The house was under construction for about six months, local gas deliverymen said.
A deeper portion of the tunnel featured an adapted motorcycle on rails.
The escape happened during a roughly-50-minute gap between the time when a prison guard gave Guzman his daily medicine to the moment when he was no longer visible on the internal video camera system, according to the Mexican national security commission.
United States authorities say Guzman’s Sinaloa Cartel provides a quarter of the drugs in the United States.
Guzman also escaped from a maximum security prison in Mexico in 2001. He was last captured on Feb. 22, 2014.
A nearly $4 million reward is being offered for his capture, and three prison officials have lost their jobs following Guzman’s escape.
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