A young woman who survived the kidnapping of four Americans in Mexico watched her friend and cousin being killed, her mother told CNN.
The four young people were childhood friends, according to their relatives.
One of them, who died in the attack in Matamoros, did not want to make this trip.
LaTavia McGee, Eric Williams, Zindell Brown and Shaeed Woodard were kidnapped Friday after being caught in the crossfire between two criminal gangs in that border city, in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas.
Only Eric Williams and LaTavia McGee survived.
The bodies of Shaeed Woodard, 33, and Zindell Brown, in his 20s, will be returned to the United States after forensic work at the Matamoros morgue, according to state Governor Américo Villarreal Anaya.
[Mexican authorities acknowledge that they waited four days to start looking for the Americans]
Survivors of the attack, Latavia McGee and Eric Williams.WMBF / Courtesy of Michelle Williams
"She was fine, I talked to her last night," Barbara Burgess, McGee's mother, told CNN. "She said the others started running and they were shot at the same time, they were all shot at the same time and she watched them die
.
" the woman recounted, adding that seeing her daughter “thrown into the truck like garbage” broke her heart.
I didn't want to make the trip
For her part, Zalandria, Brown's sister, said the young man did not want to make the trip across the border.
"Zindell kept saying, 'We shouldn't go down,'" she told The Associated Press news agency.
And she added that his death has been
"like a bad dream you wish you could wake up from
. "
The four Americans were attacked in Mexico on Friday, where they had traveled from South Carolina for a medical procedure on one of them, according to authorities and the family.
“They all have known each other their whole lives. They are childhood friends
," said Williams' wife, Michelle Williams, as reported by NBC News.
Two of the four Americans kidnapped in Mexico are dead
March 8, 202302:54
The South Carolina youths' van crashed and was shot at shortly after they crossed into the border city Friday as drug cartel factions roamed the streets, the governor said.
A stray bullet also killed a Mexican woman a block away, The Associated Press reported.
The youths were dragged in a van and moved from one place to another "to create confusion and avoid efforts to rescue them," the governor explained.
They were found Tuesday in a wooden shack, guarded by a 24-year-old man who was arrested, in a rural area east of the city called Ejido Tecolote, on the road to the gulf known as Playa Bagdad, according to the chief prosecutor of the state, Irving Barrios.
The fear experienced by the residents of the place of the murder of the Americans in Matamoros
March 7, 202301:41
Survivors return to the US
The two survivors were flown back to the United States Tuesday in Brownsville, the southern tip of Texas and just across the border from Matamoros.
The convoy of ambulances and SUVs was escorted by Mexican Army
Humvees
and National Guard trucks with mounted machine guns.
The governor said Eric Williams was shot in the left leg but his life is not in danger.
"It's a huge relief," said Robert Williams, Eric's brother, 38, "I'm looking forward to seeing him again and talking to him."
The hypothesis of the Mexican authorities is "that
it was a confusion, not a direct attack
," said the state attorney.
The attackers put one of the Americans in the bed of a white pickup truck and then dragged and loaded the other three, while other terrified people sat silently in their cars, hoping not to attract the attention of the criminals.
The shootings illustrate the terror that has reigned for years in Matamoros, a city dominated by factions of the powerful Gulf drug cartel that often clash with each other.
Amid the violence, thousands of Mexicans have disappeared in the state of Tamaulipas alone.
"They shut up like mummies"
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said those responsible would be punished and complained about US media coverage of the young men accusing them of sensationalism while when Mexicans die "they shut up like mummies."
“We are really sorry that this is happening in our country,” he said, adding that the US government has every right to be upset by the violence.
US Attorney General Merrick Garland blamed the deaths on drug cartels: federal authorities, he said, "are doing everything possible to dismantle, disrupt, and ultimately prosecute their leaders and all drug cartel networks." they depend on," Garland declared. The FBI had offered a $50,000 reward for the arrest of the youths' captors.