On Friday, March 3rd, five Americans — Zindell Brown, Shaeed Woodard, Eric Williams, Cheryl Orange, and LaTavia Washington McGee — traveled from South Carolina to Texas to enter Mexico. Orange stayed behind in Texas to wait while the others drove to Matamoros, Mexico in a van. Their goal was to drop McGee off at the cosmetic surgery clinic where she had an appointment and return, a trip that should have taken around 15 minutes.
While trying to locate the clinic, however, the group was ambushed by armed men who crashed into their van before surrounding them.
“All of a sudden they (the gunmen) were in front of us,” said an unidentified witness of the event. “I entered a state of shock, nobody honked their horn, nobody moved. Everybody must have been thinking the same thing, ‘If we move they will see us, or they might shoot us.”
Woodard and Brown were killed on the spot while Williams was shot in the leg twice. Arely Pablo, a Mexican woman, was hit with a stray bullet and was also killed during the altercation. McGee was not injured.
Soon after the event, video footage began circulating around social media showing the group being pushed into the back of a pickup truck and taken away from the scene.
Various U.S. agencies quickly began working in conjunction with Mexican authorities to rescue the group, including the FBI, which offered a $50,000 reward for the return of the victims. For days, the kidnappers evaded capture by changing locations often.
On March 7th, however, Mexican officials announced that the Americans had been found in Tamaulipas. They were eventually returned to the U.S., where McGee and Williams were taken to a hospital to receive treatment.
Then, on March 9, a Mexican cartel called the Gulf Cartel and handed in five members to the police, claiming that they had been the ones responsible for the shooting. The cartel apologized to the families of those affected through a handwritten letter.
The letter, which condemned the kidnapping, stated that the cartel “decided to hand over those directly involved and responsible for the acts, who at all times acted under their own determination and indiscipline and against the rules in which the [Gulf Cartel] always operates.”
According to Mexican officials, the attack was the result of a misunderstanding and the group had simply gotten caught between rival cartel groups.
Violence in Mexico due to cartel groups is not uncommon. In recent years, there have been countless cases of visitors being kidnapped or killed by cartels. Individuals traveling to the country and their vehicles are sometimes targeted as well.
In the last few decades, the rise in cartel-related violence in the country has impacted Mexican citizens. Due to rivalry, the country’s many cartel groups often fight among themselves, with civilians sometimes getting caught in the crossfire. In fact, around 100,000 people are still missing in the country due to cartel-related cases. Little information is known about many of these cases, with some families taking the initiative to set up “search collectives” hoping to find their relatives.
The kidnapping of Brown, Woodard, Williams, and McGee has put additional pressure on President López Obrador, who promised to take action regarding the many disappearances in the country. While he has taken some action, violence, and homicides in the country remain high.
