The leader of the Tren de Aragua criminal organization, Niño Guerrero, a fugitive from justice and killed in an American operation in Venezuela announced on Friday (12), built his power inside a Venezuelan prison, from where he expanded his influence to several countries.
Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, known as Niño Guerrero, died at age 42 in southern Venezuela, President Donald Trump and Venezuelan authorities said.
Born in the city of Maracay, about 100 kilometers from Caracas, he was just a teenager who had not finished high school when he began his criminal activities. In 2010, he had already committed robberies, murders and kidnappings. He was then imprisoned in the Tocorón penitentiary, in the state of Aragua, from where he escaped, but two years later he was recaptured.
From then on, he began building the Tren de Aragua, which would become one of the most powerful criminal groups in Latin America. In 2025, the Trump administration declared it a “terrorist organization.”
He was “a guy with great criminal intelligence,” Luis Izquiel, lawyer and professor of criminology at the Central University of Venezuela, explained to AFP.
The academic attributed Guerrero’s leadership “not so much because of his ferocity, nor because of his inhumanity in criminal activity, but because he was an individual with a criminal mind who managed to expand the tentacles of the Tren de Aragua and strengthen them”.
Swimming pool, zoo and nightclub
In Tocorón prison, where he built a base of operations full of luxuries, Niño Guerrero became a “pran”, an acronym for “heavyweight, born killer”, an expression used by criminals to describe the leader of a gang, explained Izquiel.
He lived in a two-story house inside the prison, where he received all types of visitors. It had a swimming pool, baseball field, nightclub, restaurants and even a zoo, according to documents from Ronna Rísquez, author of the book “El Tren de Aragua: la banda que revolucionó el crimen organized en América Latina” (The Tren de Aragua: the gang that revolutionized organized crime in Latin America, in free translation).
Guerrero imposed his law inside and outside prison, controlled weapons and money and was credited with atrocious crimes in several countries, such as Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia.
He fled Tocorón in 2023, when the Venezuelan government carried out several operations to eliminate the “pranes”, especially in that penitentiary.
In 2025, he was indicted by a New York court, along with 69 other alleged members of the Tren de Aragua, for having ordered, directed and facilitated acts of terrorism and violence in the United States.
Washington offered a reward of five million dollars for any information leading to his capture.
‘Quick and lethal attack’
Guerrero’s whereabouts were officially unknown until this Friday, when United States President Donald Trump announced that he had died in “a quick and lethal attack” carried out by American forces, in a “closely coordinated” operation in Venezuela.
Trump released a 10-second video on social media showing an aerial view of a building surrounded by vegetation before an explosion occurred, which raised a large cloud of smoke.
Venezuelan authorities confirmed shortly afterwards that Guerrero had been “neutralized” in the Amazonian state of Bolívar, during “confrontations with members” of “organized criminal structures operating in the region”.
For Izquiel, this is excellent news for the countries where Tren de Aragua operates, because Guerrero was a head of vertical command. “It’s a hard blow,” he said.
Tren de Aragua, formed in 2014 and operating in eight South American countries, according to intelligence information, is different from other criminal organizations in which the dead leader is quickly replaced by second-tier subordinates.
The United States appoints as Guerrero’s right-hand man Johan Petrica, a former companion in Tocorón, identified as the connection to the Tren de Aragua in Bolívar, a rich mining region. They also identify Juancho, a former legal mine foreman of Colombian origin, who was a leader among the workers and who later became a “pran”.
Both operated in La Claritas, where there are important gold deposits and where the Venezuelan government mobilized a major military operation this week.
