Four US citizens, identified as Latavia “Tay” McGee, Shaeed Woodard, Zindell Brown, and Eric James Williams, were shot at and abducted in Mexico while traveling for a cosmetic medical procedure.
According to relatives who spoke to ABC News and The Associated Press, the group of friends from South Carolina had crossed over the southern border from Texas into the dangerous city of Matamoros in Tamaulipas when their white minivan came under fire and gunmen kidnaped them.
McGee’s mother, Barbara Burgess, had warned her daughter not to go, but McGee reassured her that she would be okay before leaving on Wednesday. McGee was scheduled to have the surgery on Friday and called her mother to say she was 15 minutes away from the doctor’s office, but that was the last time Burgess heard from her daughter.
The group’s families are devastated and are praying for their safe return.
Shocking video footage of the purported abduction posted online shows men in bulletproof vests pushing a woman into the flatbed of a white pickup truck before carrying a man and throwing him into it. Then they dragged two more men across the ground into the same flatbed.
The woman sat up in the back, while two of the men appeared to be unresponsive — either wounded or dead, according to the footage and a witness.
The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for the return of the victims and arrests of their kidnappers. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador confirmed that one Mexican citizen was killed in the broad-daylight shooting.
Matamoros has been plagued by fighting among factions of the Gulf drug cartel for several years, and the US Consulate had issued an alert about the danger on Friday.
The State Department warns US citizens against traveling to Tamaulipas, but many Americans who live near the border often cross it to visit family and attend appointments in the area.
»Four US citizens are shot at and abducted in Mexico«
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