In Colombia, Scientology’s ‘Casa Hubbard’ has a pretty interesting neighbor

 
Regular correspondent Jeffrey Augustine has a rather startling discovery to share with us…

It’s December 2, 1993, and in Colombia’s city of Medellin, in the Los Olivos residential district, the world’s wealthiest and most violent drug dealer is hiding out in a nondescript two-story home. The man is the notorious Pablo Escobar, whose cocaine cartel has brutally murdered countless people. Even the United States is not safe. Miami has been gripped in a wave of violence and killings ordered by Escobar.

Escobar is talking to his son on the phone. A Colombian military intelligence operative intercepts the call and relays information to other members of the Search Bloc, a special unit of the National Police. Led by Colonel Hugo Martínez, the Search Bloc team moves in and stealthily approaches the building containing Escobar, located at Carrera 79B #45D-94. Alerted to their presence, Escobar says goodbye to his son.

Álvaro de Jesús Agudelo, a/k/a “El Limón,” is Escobar’s only bodyguard this day. Escobar and El Limón open fire on the police as they make their way upstairs. The two men then jump out of a second story window onto the roof of the smaller home next to their hideout. As they do so, another group of Search Bloc members make their way onto the neighboring rooftops.

Escobar and his bodyguard never make it off the red tile rooftop of the house onto which they had jumped. El Limón is shot and killed almost immediately. The force of the gunfire propels his body off the rooftop of the house and onto the ground.

Escobar is trapped on the rooftop as he fires at the Search Bloc in a desperate attempt to escape. Two bullets rip through Escobar’s leg and torso. The fatal shot tears through Escobar’s right ear and kills him instantly. Escobar collapses on the tile roof. Colonel Martínez shouts into his radio, “Viva Colombia! We have just killed Pablo Escobar!”

Since that shootout, debates have raged over whether Escobar was actually killed by the police or ended his own life. He had reportedly told his family that if he were ever cornered, he would put a bullet into his ear, which was the location of the fatal shot. But either way, the location of that scene has become a local landmark, and you can find numerous websites and videos that provide a guide to finding the two-story hideout.

In one particular video of the location, the camera operator shows that the old hideout has gained a third story, but it’s clearly still recognizable as the house were Escobar had been hiding out…

 
And when he zooms out a little, his eye is drawn to a curious looking volcano next door…

 
As he then quickly pans past that next door storefront, we can see that it bears the name “Casa Hubbard”….

 
A check of Scientology’s website confirms that the Scientology Mission in Medellin is, in fact, located right next door to the Pablo Escobar death house:

 
Scientology’s choice of location for a mission is, in our view, a perfect metaphor: Scientology is a transnational criminal syndicate run by a crime boss with an army of enforcers and paid thugs.

 
— Jeffrey Augustine

 
Thank you for that sobering connection, Jeffrey. And looking at the most recent Google streetview of the location, taken in July 2017, you can see on the left the low rooftop where Escobar came to rest, in the middle the two-story-turned-three-story hideout (now a “Spanish School”), and on the right the building no longer has its Casa Hubbard signage. As so many other Scientology missions around the world, this one appears to exist only in a church website directory.

 
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Posted by Tony Ortega on July 17, 2018 at 07:00

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