Larry said he ‘smoked a fool from 12th Street’ – and a Wirral man was caught up in the fallout
11:36, 21 Dec 2025Updated 11:51, 21 Dec 2025
Colin Anditon spent decades in jail
An unearthed court document sheds new light on the “Mexican gang war” which led to a Wirral man serving years in a US prison. Colin Anditon, a drug dealer who was recently caught red-handed by county lines investigators in Birkenhead, previously served 20 years in an American prison after being caught up in a gangland shooting.
Anditon, now 53, was just 18 when he stole a car that went on to be used in a drive-by shotgun murder in Pomona, California, in 1990. The victim was Danny Hurtado. His friend Mondo Ortiz, who was with Hurtado at the time, blamed the shooting on a man called “Angel” from the rival “Cherryville” gang – but a court ruled Anditon was also inside the vehicle at the time, and so he was considered equally culpable.
In a letter addressed to a Seattle chief investigator on September 12 2001, a then 29-year-old Anditon described his version of events before and after the deadly shooting. Anditon was eight years into a 25 years-to-life sentence at California State Prison at the time, having been found guilty of “wilful, deliberate and premeditated” murder in 1993.
He described how, in the early hours of October 5 1990, he stole a maroon 1988 Hyundai-Excell and was driving around with two other men, Luis Ortiz and Larry Cabrera (also known as “the Weasel”), looking for more cars to steal. After a night of petty crime, the trio drove to Ortiz’s garage where they “hung out listening to music”.
At around 2.30pm, Anditon said Cabrera left in the stolen Hyundai alone to pick up a “dent puller” (a tool used to pull out a car’s ignition), while he and Ortiz remained at the garage.
He said: “Sometime between 5pm and 5.15pm, a skinny, short Mexican came running in the back door of the garage carrying a shiny black pump shotgun in his hands…He looked me in the eyes and then looked to Luis. Nobody said anything, in fact the guy seemed momentarily stunned, short of breath and even seathing (sic).
“Then all of a sudden he pumped the shotgun, making three shotgun shells eject from the gun without firing it. He quickly picked up the shells and put them in his pocket and threw the shotgun down on the couch. He then turned and ran back out of the garage over a small side fence.
Luis and I ran out after him, where I saw him get into the driver’s seat of the stolen maroon coloured Hyundai. I also took notice it was Larry in the front passenger seat. There was also a third unidentified male Mexican in the rear seat.
“As the car sped away, Larry shouted out the front passenger window, saying ‘I’ll be back’.”
Colin Anditon
Anditon said he and Ortiz remained at the garage until around 7pm, when a friend told him he had seen the stolen Hyundai parked nearby, surrounded by police cars. At 9pm, he said Cabrera returned in a large 1970s style pick-up truck with two Mexican men, one of whom was the shotgun-wielding man he had seen earlier.
He said: “Larry told us ‘I smoked a fool from 12th Street’ (which meant that he had shot and killed someone from a rival Mexican street gang).
“Larry justified his actions by telling all of us that he did it ‘for my homeboy Sherlock, who is now resting in peace’. It wouldn’t’ be for another two years after this time that I learned Sherlock was from the same gang as Larry Cabrera and that Sherlock had been murdered by the Pomona 12th Street gang members in June 1990.”
Anditon claimed he shouted at Cabrera that “his fingerprints were all over the Hyundai and that the police would be coming straight to (him)”. He said he agreed to tell police he had dumped the car in Ganesha Hills in Pomona after joy-riding earlier that day, which would explain his fingerprints inside.
He was taken in for questioning on October 7 and held at the Mail Riverside County Jail. Here, he reportedly confessed to the murder to another inmate. But Anditon said this was merely “jail house bragging”, saying: “I came up with the idea of pretending to be a hardened criminal by telling inmates I had committed all kinds of violent crimes, certainly all of which I did not actually commit.”
He denied being in the vehicle at the time of the drive-by shooting, blaming the crime solely on Cabrera and the two unknown men. However, he claimed he refused to co-operate with police or “snitch on anyone” at the time as he feared for his own safety.
Though it was accepted Anditon was not the gunman, he was nonetheless found guilty murdering Danny Hurtado as a court ruled he was present at the time.
Anditon’s family won a hard-fought campaign for him to be transferred back to the UK to serve out the rest of his sentence in November 2012. In 2014, it was announced that he had received permission from the High Court to apply for parole.
He eventually regained his freedom, but was recalled to prison last year after being detained in Birkenhead. Anditon and Leanne Taylor, 47, were spotted carrying out a drug deal in an alleyway off Corporation Road, and a subsequent search found 51 wraps of heroin and five wraps of crack cocaine concealed in Taylor’s underwear.
The pair were caught on January 16 2024, when Merseyside Police officers investigating county lines dealing spotted them leaving an address on Corporation Road at around 12.40pm. They went into the alleyway, where Anditon approached a parked taxi and engaged in a drug deal with a female passenger.
The plain-clothes officers detained Anditon, who had £46 cash in his left hand. The female taxi passenger was also searched and found to have two wraps of crack cocaine and one wrap of heroin, believed to have been sold to her by Anditon.
Four months later, on May 2 2024, he was arrested again after he was seen entering and leaving a property on Beresford Road, Oxton, with another man.
The man Anditon was with was detained and found to be in possession of drugs and money. A subsequent search of Beresford Road found 20 wraps of heroin and nine wraps of crack cocaine concealed in a coat belonging to Anditon.
At Liverpool Crown Court on December 16, prosecutor Andrew McInnes said: “Colin Anditon is 53 with 13 convictions for 26 offences, many for dishonesty, but a significant conviction from the USA in 1993 when he received an indeterminate sentence.”
Ken Heckle, defending, said the 53-year-old had spent time in mental health hospitals following his arrests. He said: “It may well be impacted by cocaine use, but he’s still being treated in a mental health wing in prison. He’s probably that much more obviously vulnerable because of how this exhibits.
“I accept cocaine use is there as well, but it doesn’t appear to be if you get rid of the cocaine use, you get rid of all the problems. These are long-term mental health issues.
“Obviously there has been a long time of incarceration both here and in America. On a happier note, he seems to be thriving and doing a lot better within the prison system.”
Judge Robert Trevor-Jones sentenced Anditon to 24 months in prison relating to the offences in January 2024, and 18 months relating to the offences in May 2024, making a total of three years and five months in prison.