By the afternoon the number had been 14. According to the authorities, 8 prisoners were killed in a prison in Guayaquil. Dozens of prisoners and around ten police officers were injured in the rioting in the two prisons.
The Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso saw the cause of the fighting in the rivalry between criminal gangs that often recruit in and operate from prisons in South America. Numerous inmates broke out in Cotopaxi prison during the mutiny. According to the prison authorities, 86 inmates who had fled were recaptured, and the public prosecutor’s office brought charges against 74 inmates who had fled.
President Lasso had declared a state of emergency in the prisons and released the director of the national prison authority to exchange him for a general. In the sometimes overcrowded prisons in the Andean country, violent clashes occur again and again. In February, 79 people were killed in violent clashes between rival gangs in several prisons in Ecuador.