Survivors of kidnapping in Mexico returned to the US

CIUDAD VICTORIA, Mexico – A trip to Mexico for cosmetic surgery veered off course when four Americans were caught in a shootout with a drug cartel that left two dead and two held captive for days in a remote area of ​​the Persian Gulf coast before being rescued from a wooden shacks, officials said Tuesday.

According to the regional governor, their minivan crashed and was shot at shortly after they entered the border town of Matamoros on Friday, when drug cartel groups broke into the streets. A stray bullet also killed a Mexican woman about a block and a half from the house.

CONNECTED: FBI says not to travel to parts of Mexico for spring break after 4 Americans were reportedly abducted

The four Americans were taken away in a pickup truck and were frantically searched by Mexican authorities as the cartel transported them – even to a medical clinic – “to create confusion and avoid efforts to rescue them,” Tamaulipas Gov. Américo Villarreal said.

They were found on Tuesday in a wooden shack guarded by an arrested man in a rural area east of Matamoros called Ejido Tecolote, on the road to a bay called “Baghdad Beach,” state attorney general Irving Barrios said.

The surviving Americans were returned to the US on Tuesday in Brownsville, the southernmost tip of Texas, right across the border from Matamoros. The column of ambulances and SUVs was escorted by Mexican military Humvees and National Guard trucks with mounted machine guns.

A relative of one of the victims said on Monday that the four had traveled together from the Carolinas so that one of them could have a tummy tuck operation at a doctor in Matamoros.

The governor said injured American Eric Williams was hit in the left leg and the injury was not life-threatening.

“It’s a real relief,” Robert Williams, Eric’s 38-year-old brother, said Tuesday in North Carolina. “I look forward to seeing him again and the opportunity to speak with him.”

Robert Williams was unsure that another survivor, Latavia Burgess, was seeking surgery.

The survivors were taken to the Valley Regional Medical Center with an FBI escort, according to the Brownsville Herald. The hospital spokesman forwarded all inquiries to the FBI.

The two dead — Shaid Woodard, 33, and Zindell Brown, about 20 — will be handed over to US authorities after a forensic examination at the Matamoros morgue, the governor said.

Video and photographs taken during and immediately after Friday’s abduction show a white American minivan parked next to another vehicle with at least one bullet hole in the driver’s side window. According to eyewitnesses, there was a collision of two cars. Almost immediately, several men in bulletproof vests and machine guns arrived in another vehicle to surround the scene.

The Mexican authorities’ hypothesis is that “it was a mix-up, not a direct attack,” the state prosecutor said.

The gunmen pushed one of the Americans into the back of a white pickup truck, then dragged and loaded three others. Frightened civilian motorists sat silently in their cars, hoping not to attract attention. Two victims were found to be immobile.

The shooting illustrates the reign of terror that has reigned for years in Matamoros, a city dominated by factions of the powerful Persian Gulf drug cartel who often go to war among themselves. Amid the violence, thousands of Mexicans have disappeared in the state of Tamaulipas alone.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said the perpetrators would be punished. He cited arrests in connection with the 2019 killing of nine US-Mexican dual nationals in Sonora near the US border.

López Obrador complained about US media coverage of missing Americans, accusing them of sensationalism. He said that when Mexicans are killed, the media “goes silent like mummies”.

“We are very 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.

“The DEA and the FBI are doing everything they can to expose and disrupt and ultimately bring to justice the leaders of the cartel and all the networks they depend on,” Garland said.

The FBI offered a $50,000 reward for the return of the victims and the arrest of the kidnappers.

Robert Williams said in a phone interview that he and his brother Eric are from South Carolina but now live in the Winston-Salem area of ​​North Carolina.

Williams described his brother as “calm” and “jolly”.

He didn’t know his brother was going to Mexico until the kidnapping was on the news. But looking at his brother’s Facebook posts, he thinks his brother didn’t see the trip as dangerous.

“He thought it would be fun,” Williams said.

When told on Tuesday that his brother was among the survivors, Williams said that when they meet, “I’ll just tell him how happy I am to see him and how glad I am that he survived and that I love him. “

CONNECTED: US issues maximum ‘no travel’ warning for Mexico ahead of spring break

___

Loller reported from Nashville. AP contributors Lindsey Whitehurst, Aamer Madhani, and Matthew Lee of Washington contributed to this report.