COPS in Mexico have apprehended the suspected killer of a British football coach following a shootout which saw two policemen die.

Orlando Orea, 39, was wanted in connection with the fatal stabbing of Michael Jones, 25, and had been on the run for six years.

Orea is said to have fled the scene in New York in 2012 in what is thought to have been a case of mistaken identity.

Cops finally tracked Orea down to a rented room in Puebla City where he was drinking beer with friends.

He opened fire when the policemen tried to serve him with extradition papers and killed Victor Suarez Diaz and Luis Alberto Luna.

Orea the fled but he was finally caught hours later in the rural town of Acatian de Osorio.

Prosecutors said he was armed with two guns but was held without a struggle.

Jones had been a youth coach with the New York Red Bulls when he was slashed in the neck and chest and had an ear cut off in the appalling attack near Union Square in Manhattan.

It is thought Orea mistakenly thought Jones was a man who had intervened in a fight with a woman in a bar earlier.

Authorities in Mexico are now deciding on whether Orea will be extradited to the United States and put on trial or face a trial in the country for the killing of two officers.

Under an agreement between Mexico and the US, a suspect can be tried in one country and extradited for trial in the other before serving a sentence in either case.

Orea left a note with a brother in Queens, New York which read "Love you guys very much. Hope you can forgive me. I'm sorry", according to reports in the US.

A year on from Jones’s death, his mum Carole said: “It destroys me when I think about what happened to Mike. I only get by without thinking about it.

“If I play the events over in my mind it’s unbearable — the pain, the suffering, how helpless he would have been.

“Mike was on his own and he bled to death on the pavement. There are no witnesses to help catch the evil person who did this. We want justice but it seems there’s very little chance of that.”