On this day, Dec. 2, in 1993, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar was shot and killed by a Delta Force-trained squad of Colombian police. The United States trained the police so they could hunt Escobar down. By the time of his death, Escobar had become internationally known as one of the biggest drug dealers in the world. His Medellin Cartel was the primary supplier of cocaine in the 1980s, and in 1989 Forbes magazine listed him as the seventh richest man in the world. In Colombia, he cultivated a Robin Hood image for himself, building Roman Catholic churches and handing out money to the poor. On the day of his death, the Colombian police squad known as the Search Bloc located Escobar using radio triangulation in a middle-class neighborhood. Escobar and the Search Bloc exchanged fire, and he was gunned down on a rooftop.
– Freeman Klopott
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