Man who spent 9 years inside one of the world’s deadliest prisons reveals the one thing he’ll never forget
Pieter Tritton was sent to an Ecuador jail after his drug smuggling was uncovered by police
William Morgan
A former international drug trafficker who spent years inside one of the world's prisons has shared some of the worst part of his 'barbaric' stay - which were so haunting he said they will live with him forever.
Despite growing up in an idyllic patch of the English countryside, a stone's throw from Princess Anne's rural estate, Pieter Tritton told LADbible that he fell into drug dealing as a cash-strapped teenager.
He was imprisoned a few years later for smuggling cocaine and amphetamines while at college, but he struggled to give up his criminal career on the outside and after his release, he began to profit from creating drug routes from Ecuador, importing cocaine disguised inside camping equipment.
But, in 2005, while out there 'looking at hundreds of kilos' of cocaine for his import business, UK investigators uncovered one of his main labs and managed to flip his co-conspirator, leading to his arrest - landing him in one of the world's most deadly and unruly prisons, Quito.
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Here he saw people shot dead in front of him 'on the spur of the moment' with violence doled out at any time. Tritton described Quito as a relatively open prison, with shops and restaurants like those of a 'small town'.
But inside its four walls, anything could change at any moment, and no level of violence was too much for the gang-dominated jail. He described walking around and suddenly seeing someone with their 'brains all over the place, guts hanging out'.
He said the one thing he would never forget was the smell of the blood from the regular killings, adding: "That is one of the worst things, that metallicy taste in your mouth, so much blood."
The spectre of death became a constant for Tritton while at Quito, which he described as being 'one of the worst things' about his time in the grim prison.
He detailed going to sleep every night thinking, 'Is this my last night on this planet? I don't know, 'cos I really don't know.'
Tritton witnessed people 'killed every which way you can imagine,' including being 'electrocuted, hacked to death, blown up, people shot in the face, shot in the head, decapitated'.
Then, as if things could not get worse, he was later transferred to another notoriously violent prison in the port city of Guayaquil.
In contrast to Quito, which had 1500 inmates, this new prison contained 8000 people across 24 wings, with gangs controlling almost every aspect of life.
With a long stint ahead of him, he was warned that most people do not survive five years in this jail, as he said: "You're either gonna end up dead, ill, or you are gonna go mad. But you won't be coming out alive, or at least undamaged, after five years."
After managing to survive for five years by becoming a member of an armed prison gang, Tritton contracted TB and saw his weight almost half, dropping to just 108 pounds.
Despite this illness, he was constantly 'engaging in fights with people' because the powerful Choneros gang was employing him to sell alcohol and cocaine to his inmates.
Tritton described these criminal groups as having a 'stranglehold' over the jail, where prisoners armed themselves with 'submachine guns' and assault rifles to carry on their gang war inside the institution.
He said that, while he would never forget the violence he witnessed, he had lost count of how many people he had watched die during his time at both infamous Ecuadorian prisons.
After one hair-raising incident, Tritton said the embassy 'just started freaking out' and he was sent back to the UK after his family paid a fine he'd received during his sentencing.
He described his time at Wandsworth Prison as a 'holiday camp' as he didn't have to worry about getting shot.