Murder and drug trafficking suspects hide out in Honduras after fleeing San Francisco
A suspect in a savage drug trafficking-related murder on a San Francisco street in 2024, which saw a man stabbed dozens of times, is still at liberty having fled back to Honduras, it has emerged.
29-year-old Bryan Adalberto Rodriguez Sosa died where he fell just before 8:30pm on March 5 2024 outside 135 Hyde Street.
He had sustained knife wounds to the head, neck, chest and arms.
Prosecutors say Tenderloin drug dealer Rachell Anahi Mendez Sanchez, one of three attackers wanted for Sosa’s murder, bolted to Honduras in the aftermath of the killing and has not been captured.
New charges leveled by federal authorities against her brother, Jeferson Mendez Estrada, reveal cops’ belief his sister participated in the murder and spotlight a drug trafficking operation run on the ground by a clan of heavily armed Hondurans backed by Mexican cartel enforcers who supplied them with fentanyl.
He and co-defendants Rodas Salguero and Jefry Mendez Sanchez – Estrada’s brother – are accused of conspiring to sell fentanyl and methamphetamine in San Francisco and Alameda county jails.
Sanchez is himself on the lam in Honduras following federal prosecutors’ failure to secure his return to the Bay Area after he completed a prison sentence for unlawfully returning to the U.S.
Despite having been indicted by a grand jury in Northern California months before his release, immigration officials deported him to Honduras again.
All the suspects are illegal aliens. The fiasco puts further emphasis on the widespread criminality fostered by so-called ‘sanctuary laws’ in and around San Francisco which serve to protect gangs of foreign drug dealers.
The prospects of the Hondurans’ returning to the U.S. are mixed. In the last year, three Catrachos were returned to San Francisco to face justice amid tension between the U.S. and Honduras over an extension to the extradition agreement between the two nations.
A newly-released medical examiner’s report details the horrifying extent of Sosa’s injuries, along with investigators’ assessment that he had been assaulted by three people and a knife was passed to a fourth.
“[Sosa] appeared to engage with others in a verbal exchange,” wrote investigator Norma Contreras of security camera footage seen by law enforcement.
“[He] then punched someone and three people then assaulted him; one woman and two men. Two of the people were seen stabbing the subject with a knife…the suspects then fled in different directions. One of the suspects was seen passing the knife to another nearby person.”
Sosa was stabbed 29 times. One wound to the neck cut his windpipe and upper lung, while two of the stab wounds to his torso hit his heart. One of the wounds to his head, a stab to the left ear, hit his spine.
Among those whom police are seeking in connection with the murder is Rachell Anahi Mendez Sanchez – whom they describe as a drug dealer who operated in the Tenderloin neighborhood.
Her involvement surfaced in court documents filed by federal authorities in connection with the prosecution of two of her brothers – alleged to be part of a trio selling drugs to all comers in San Francisco and that had cornered the drug market in jails in the city and Alameda County.
Those documents also label her unnamed boyfriend as another of the murder suspects.
In a jail call recorded a week after the killing, Salguero was told by a family member that Rachell Mendez Sanchez and her boyfriend had killed a man. A month later, in another call, Estrada told his brother that she was in Honduras.
Prosecutors say Jeferson Mendez Estrada, Jefry Mendez Sanchez and Rodas Salguero conspired to distribute methamphetamine and fentanyl between October 2023 and April 2024. Mendez Sanchez is separately charged with possession with intent to distribute fentanyl and methamphetamine.
“Rodas [Salguero] had been in federal custody since September 2023,” wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Ivana Djak in a motion to detain, “and coordinated narcotics smuggling into Alameda County Santa Rita Jail, located in Dublin, California, and San Francisco County San Bruno Jail, located in San Bruno, California.”
Salguero, Djak said, used jail phone calls to advise Sanchez and Estrada on how to keep trading using his suppliers after he was caught by federal authorities selling drugs in the Tenderloin.
Sanchez is then alleged to have himself sold drugs to undercover officers on multiple occasions.
Estrada was nabbed after leading California Highway Patrol officers on a 130mph+ chase in a stolen Audi in October 2023. Police found a stolen handgun near where the car was ditched in Oakland.
Sanchez who, it turned out, was also in the car, was able to escape on foot.
Prosecutors say that the fugitive Sanchez accidentally poisoned himself with fentanyl and had to be resuscitated at an Oakland hospital in February 2024.
Estrada pleaded guilty to firearms possession and evading police and served a little less than six months in jail as a consequence.
During that six months, while Estrada and Salguero were both housed at Santa Rita Jail, prosecutors say they set about importing drugs into the facility.
Also during that period, Sanchez was out on the streets selling drugs – including to an undercover employee of the Drug Enforcement Administration. This continued until August 2023 when he was arrested after crashing a stolen Infiniti G37 during a pursuit by Emeryville PD. Police found bullets and methamphetamine in the car.
Because he was on supervised release, after being previously deported to Honduras, he was handed over to U.S. Marshals and put before a federal court in Utah, where he was sentenced to 15 months.
He was deported to Honduras despite having already been indicted by a grand jury in the Northern District of California.
Estrada was captured by the FBI in August 2025 in a Seattle suburb. A raid of his home turned up five guns and half a pound of fentanyl.
Estrada was denied bail by U.S. Magistrate Judge Alex Tse at a Christmas Eve 2025 hearing at San Francisco federal courthouse. It was the detention memorandum filed ahead of this hearing which detailed the scope of the criminality involved and the wider family network supporting it.
A spokesman for SFPD declined to comment on the state of the murder investigation.
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