A former hitman for the notorious cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar died in Colombia Thursday after a battle with stomach cancer, prison authorities said. Jhon Jairo Velásquez, also known as “Popeye,” died at the age of 57 at the National Cancer Institute in Bogota, where he’d been hospitalized since December, the National Penitentiary and Prison Institute said. Velásquez has confessed to personally murdering at least 300 people and coordinating the deaths of thousands of others on behalf of Escobar's Medellin cartel in the 1980s and 1990s. He spent more than 20 years behind bars for plotting the murder of an ex-presidential candidate and was released in 2014 on parole. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APPEscobar died during a firefight with security forces in Medellin in 1993.

Source: Fox News February 06, 2020 18:52 UTC