SANTO DOMINGO.- Despite being among Puerto Rico’s 10 most wanted fugitives since 1999, the Puerto Rican Jose Figueroa Agosto didn’t have the least difficulty in getting released when on September 22, 2001, Drugs Control (DNCD) agents arrested him in a raid in Santo Domingo, and the authorities announced an expanded search nationwide.

He was booked under the name Felipe Rodriguez de la Rosa, one of the identities he obtained when arriving in the Dominican Republic after escaping from a maximum security prison in Puerto Rico.

He also managed to obtain identification under the name of Cristian Almonte Peguero.  In that occasion, the DNCD rap sheet notes, the now fugitive was released on instructions of the prosecutor who was then on service in the antinarcotics agency.

Flees with two Dominicans

He escaped from prison in his native Puerto Rico on November 5, 1999. Less than one month later, on October 11, his Dominican lieutenant Francisco Solano de los Santos, 44, accompanied by the also Dominican Vicente Calderón Ramos, 35 also escaped. The three fled to Dominican Republic.

Figueroa and Solano are sentenced to 209 years in prison for the murder of Edgardo Martinez (El Gruero), for drug trafficking, armed assault and kidnapping.

The FBI in Puerto Rico believes the three are still in Dominican territory and are considered armed and highly dangerous.

The strange escapes took place in the State Penitentiary at Rio Piedras, near San Juan. He was known in the underworld of Río Piedras and Bayamón as “Junior Cápsula.”