We thought he was taking the mick’ – Mexican Morris used to threaten Kerry classmates with cartel

We revealed yesterday that Mexican-born O’Shea came to Ireland around 2005, after his father was killed in a car crash in south America, with his mother and sister.

The Irishman alleged to have played a leading role in the deadly Sinaloa drugs mob used to threaten classmates with the cartel in school in Kerry, it has emerged.

“He used to say he would get the cartels on us,” a former classmate of Morris “Mexican” O’Shea told The Mirror last night.

“We all thought he was taking the mick,” the former schoolmate told us – a day after we unmasked O’Shea (32) as the Irishman Chile cops want to extradite to face charges of trying to establish a cell there for the massive Sinaloa cartel.

That’s regarded by US drugs investigators as the biggest cartel in the world – and was once led by narco-terror boss Joaquin Guzman, better known as El Chapo.

We revealed yesterday that Mexican-born O’Shea came to Ireland around 2005, after his father was killed in a car crash in south America, with his mother and sister.

The family came to picturesque Killorglin in Co Kerry – where his father was from.

O’Shea and his mother and sister spent about a decade in the town and lived in the An Bhainseach estate in the town – where neighbours told us he was an inoffensive kid who kept himself to himself.

And a man who regularly interacted with Mr O’Shea said he could not believe he had been linked to a cartel.

“He was just a bit of an eejit,” he said.

But a former classmate of the suspect, who also calls himself O’Shea Salazar, has now come forward to paint a different picture – and says he is not surprised he has been linked to major criminality.

“Mexican was heading that way,” the ex-classmate from Killorglin Community College told us.

“He was a thug and a bully.

“If you ever did something or said something that he did not like he would start to throw his weight around.

“He used to tell us that he had links to the cartels back in Mexico.

“We thought he was messing and that it was just bravado.”

The ex-schoolmate said O’Shea also attacked another pupil – minutes after entering the school for the first time.

“The teacher’s back was turned and he grabbed (the pupil’s head) and tried to slam it onto the desk.

“There was a good few incidents involving him,” the ex-pupil said.

Meanwhile, we have confirmed that O’Shea received a string of charges in Ireland as a teen – and even spent time in prison.

Sources have told us in October 2009, he appeared in court charged with 14 offences, including criminal damage, possession of a firearm, public order, theft, handling stolen property – and even failing to comply with gardaí.

He was given a second chance by the court after spending a month in prison – and pleaded guilty to all the charges.

He paid €1,000 in compensation and was placed under a 12-hour curfew – as an alternative to prison.

Chile investigators are now planning to extradite Mr O’Shea from Mexico to face serious charges connected to the cartel.
They allege Mr O’Shea was a vital cog in the Sinaloa cartel.

They want to charge him over an alleged plot to set up a so-called cell of the cartel in northern Chile in 2020.

Late last month, a court in Chile accepted the request of the Prosecutor’s Office to extradite Mr O’Shea.

The agency claims his cell would import cocaine from Bolivia, which would be “collected in the commune of Alto Hospicio, and shipped to various ports and airports in Europe, in countries such as Belgium, the Netherlands, and Spain.”

They described him in court documents a dual Irish-Mexican citizen, and the son of Yolanda Salazar Tarriba who was arrested in 2021 for illicit drug trafficking.

O’Shea ties directly to “El Chapo” through the Mexican Cartel leader’s first wife María Alejandrina Salazar Hernández, the mother of “Los Chapitos” Iván Archivaldo, and Jesús Alfredo Guzmán Salazar, the documents said.

“They are related to the Sinaloa Cartel [and] are close relatives of Chapo Guzmán,” National Prosecutor Jorge Abbott told the media this week.

Yolanda Salazar Tarriba and her brother Ricardo Salazar Tarriba are said to have arrived in Chile in 2020 to coordinate the purchase of cocaine from Bolivia and its subsequent shipment abroad. According to the investigation, this operation was directed by Morris O’Shea who was living in Spain.

The Salazar-Tarriba family was infiltrated by the Chilean Civil Police after information provided by the DEA. This is how they deceived that they would collaborate to send millions of drugs to the Netherlands, where the transnational crime group has links.