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Pablo Escobar's former home in Colombia demolished

By Sommer Brokaw
An aerial view of the Monaco building, where late Pablo Escobar Gaviria, leader of the Medellin cartel, used to live, during its implosion, in Medellin, Colombia, Friday. A park in memory of drug trafficking victims will be built in the place of the building. Photo by Luis Eduardo Noriega A./EPA-EFE
1 of 2 | An aerial view of the Monaco building, where late Pablo Escobar Gaviria, leader of the Medellin cartel, used to live, during its implosion, in Medellin, Colombia, Friday. A park in memory of drug trafficking victims will be built in the place of the building. Photo by Luis Eduardo Noriega A./EPA-EFE

Feb. 23 (UPI) -- More than 25 years after Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar died, his home has been demolished.

Some 180 detonators blasted the "Monaco" building. The televised blast Friday leveled the place which Escobar once called home and sent a cloud of dust 33 feet in the air.

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The city is planning a memorial park in its place to honor the thousands of people killed by the drug kingpin's cartel in Medellin, Colombia, in the 1980s and 1990s, including four presidential candidates and approximately 500 police officers.

"Today, that building falls and hope begins," Colombian President Ivan Duque said in a televised statement. "It is impossible to change the past, but you can build a better present and a better future."

Escobar died at 44 when he was shot by police in 1993.

He was born in 1949 in Rionegro, Colombia, and lived in the Monaco building in Medellin for years until 1988 when rivals bombed it. His family abandoned the six-story building with a penthouse, and ever since it has remained vacant.

City officials weighed whether to tear it down as a reminder of a painful past or keep it as a tourist site.

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Medellin Mayor Federico Gutierrez told El Colombiano that it was important to put more emphasis on the victims of Escobar's illegal activity instead of romanticizing the narrative of his cult-like following.

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