Lima police 'patient' leaps from wheelchair with sledgehammer after cry of 'Rise, Lazarus!'
Peruvian police raided a suspected drug den in Lima disguised as schoolchildren and a patient in a wheelchair – who sprang up with a sledgehammer the moment a colleague shouted 'Rise, Lazarus!'
Undercover policing usually means a hoodie and a vague expression. Police in Lima, Peru went considerably further.
On Tuesday 10 November, officers from the Escuadrón Verde and Grupo Terna approached a house in the 1 de Junio settlement in the San Juan de Miraflores district dressed as schoolchildren – there was a school and a hospital nearby – while one colleague was pushed along as a patient in a wheelchair, a blanket tucked over his knees.
At the gate, someone shouted “¡Levántate, Lázaro!” – “Rise, Lazarus!” The patient duly rose, produced a sledgehammer from under the blanket and set about the iron gate, while the “pupils” fetched ladders to reach the first floor. A police drone filmed the whole miracle.
Illustration: Gorilla Gazette / AI-generated image – not a real photo.
According to La República, the raid followed an undercover drug purchase. Three people were arrested, alleged members of a gang police call “Los Santurrones”, and hundreds of doses of suspected cocaine paste were reportedly seized.
Colonel Pedro Rojas, head of the Escuadrón Verde, said the “camouflage strategy” of posing as schoolchildren and a wheelchair patient let officers get in without being spotted.
Illustration: Gorilla Gazette / AI-generated image – not a real photo.
The nun and the pantomime horse are presumably being saved for next term.
Sources: La República (11 Nov 2026) · El Tiempo (11 Nov 2026) · 24horas.cl.
Image credits: Top photo: Sosofie, “Presencia de la Policía Nacional del Perú al inicio de la Marcha del Orgullo 2024”, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (representative, cropped; not the actual raid). Illustrations: Gorilla Gazette / AI-generated, not real photos.
