Death came calling under the warm Mexican sun for a man wanted for drug trafficking and links to the Hells Angels.
Cops say Mathieu “Barbu” Bélanger, 39, of Repentigny, Quebec, who was on the run from a Canada-wide warrant, was killed in a targeted hit in Playa del Carmen on Saturday.
Belanger was shot to death by two gun-wielding motorcyclists as he climbed into his new luxury Jeep SUV at a shopping plaza in the middle of the day.
Journal de Montreal reports that Belanger was part of a cartel that exported massive quantities of cocaine to Quebec and the rest of Canada. The paper said he was a high-ranking member of the gang.
He had been wanted by the SQ for unauthorized possession of a firearm, negligent use of a firearm and improper storage.
Belanger then fled Canada with his partner, Andrée-Anne Vignola Sullivan, 33, and their three children. She is also wanted in connection with the investigation.
The family had been living in Playa del Carmen using bogus Mexican documents for the past two years. South of the Rio Grande, he continued to be a major player in the cocaine trade, police sources told JDM.
Now, cops in Mexico are attempting to piece together the connection between Belanger, the Hells Angels and the hyper-violent Mexican drug cartels.
He was found dead in the driver’s seat of his black Jeep, which did not have licence plates.
Detectives said Belanger had been shot five times in the head. He had just left a local gym and was alone at the time of the hit.
Forensics officers found more than a dozen empty shell casings at the crime scene.
According to cops, both Belanger and his wife were considered fugitives and determined to be part of the criminal organization supplying cocaine to the Hells Angels.
Local investigators were reportedly onto the couple and he was arrested by Playa del Carmen police in April. Belanger was stopped by the SSC of Solidaridad in a federal highway roadblock and arrested after police found a revolver, ammunition and what appeared to be a large quantity of methamphetamines in his vehicle.
He was later released.
In recent years, Canadian criminals have found sun-kissed Mexico a dangerous place.
Last December, another Canadian criminal with tight ties to the Angels was murdered at a Cancun gym. Samy Tamouro, 37, had earlier been busted in a massive narcotics sweep in Montreal.
In 2022, two Canadian gangsters were gunned down in the Hotel Xcaret south of Playa del Carmen. The targeted men were Robert James Dinh, also known as Cong Dinh, and Thomas Cheruka, both aged 34.
Mob hitman Michael Graham Cudmore, 39, of Hamilton, was killed in 2020.
Cops say Cudmore was the triggerman in the murder of Mob scion Angelo Musitano, 39, in 2017. The murder triggered three years of bloodshed in the southern Ontario underworld.
Two months earlier, he allegedly shot to death Mila Barberi, 28, in Vaughan. The bullets were intended for a boyfriend with organized crime connections.
Cudmore died of a suspected drug overdose.
Another suspect in the bloodshed was Cudmore’s mentor, Daniele Ranieri, 34, a volatile Toronto enforcer. The pair reportedly hooked up in Mexico.
Ranieri’s body was found trussed up, executed and dumped in a ditch in Mexico in 2018.
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