Mexican security forces captured a top drug trafficker behind much of a surge in violence in the northern border city of Tijuana on Tuesday in a fresh victory for the country’s drug war, government and police sources said.

Teodoro Garcia Simental, known as “El Teo” or “Tres Letras” for the three letters in his nickname, was caught in the beach town of La Paz in southern Baja California, a police officer who participated in the operation told Reuters. A government official also confirmed the arrest. Garcia Simental is thought to have split off from the Tijuana-based Arellano Feliz cartel to help efforts by Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman — head of the rival Sinaloa cartel and Mexico’s most wanted man — to wrest control of key smuggling corridors in northern Mexico from the Arellano Felix cartel.

He and his hitmen are known to use gruesome killing methods including torture and then dissolving the bodies of his enemies in corrosive acid.