Mexican Drug Kingpin Beltran Leyva, Dead at 56

Hector Beltran Leyva, a Mexican drug lord whose cartel earned a reputation as one of the country’s most vengeful and ruthless, died late Sunday of cardiac arrest after being transferred to a nearby hospital from jail with chest pain, Mexican authorities said.

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Nicknamed "the H," Leyva had been behind bars since March, 2016 in a maximum security facility in central Altiplano, Mexico, the Mexico Interior Ministry said in a statement.

Leyva was captured in 2014 after posing as an art and real estate dealer, with his arrest seen as a major success in the war against drugs in Mexico.

Authorities said Beltran Leyva, 56, was transferred on Sunday from prison to hospital minutes after security officers noticed he had severe chest pain that failed to subside after first aid from prison doctors.

The statement “noted that, at all times, Beltran Leyva ... received the medical attention he required and that the staff of the hospital as well as the federal center, exhausted all the clinical resources at its disposal.”