MASSACRE OF THE MORMONS
Three mothers and six children are gunned down by drug cartel after car breaks down in Mexico
THREE mothers and six children from a Mormon community have been shot dead by drug cartel gunmen in Mexico.
The nine American victims included eight-month-old twins.
One child is still missing. Six more youths and one woman are in hospital after the ambush on Monday.
One of the dead women saved her sevenmonth-old by throwing her to the floor of their car amid volleys of bullets.
The group were attacked in the Mexican border state of Sonora while travelling in a convoy of three SUVs. Their cars were riddled with bullets before being set alight.
In total, 17 people were travelling from the La Mora religious community, part of an offshoot of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Many members were born in Mexico and have dual citizenship.
One of the dead, Rhonita Maria Miller, had been driving to America with her children to pick up her husband in Phoenix, Arizona. They were set to return to Mexico to celebrate their wedding anniversary, relatives said.
The gunmen are said to have struck after her car broke down, opening fire and then torching the vehicle. Mrs Miller was killed along with her twin babies Titus and Tiana, her daughter Krystal, ten, and 12year-old son Howard.
Christina Langford Johnson, 29, and Dawna Ray Langford, 43, were in the other two cars. They were also killed along with two of Mrs Langford’s children, Trevor, 11, and Rogan, three.
Some of the children tried to hide by the roadside as one mother was shot in the chest as she put her hands up to surrender. Relatives said Mrs Johnson saved her seven- month- old baby Faith’s life by throwing her to the floor of their SUV during the attack. Rescuers found her hours later.
A video posted on social media showed the charred and smoking remains of one of the vehicles riddled with bullet holes.
‘This is for the record,’ says a male voice in a US accent, off camera, while choking up with emotion. ‘Nita and four of my grandchildren are burnt and shot up.’
One family member told how a boy managed to hide his wounded siblings in bushes before he ran to get help. Trish Cloes wrote on Facebook: ‘The children managed to get help under horrible circumstances. [They] managed to escape with their baby brother. Baby was harmed with a bullet across his chest and through his arm.’
Kenny LeBaron, a cousin of one of the women, told the New York Times: ‘When you know there are babies tied in a car seat that are burning because of some twisted evil that’s in this world... it’s just hard to cope with that.’
Mexico’s top security official Alfonso Durazo blamed cartel gunmen for the attack, saying they may have mistaken the group’s large SUVs for rival gangs’ vehicles. He also suggested it could have been a botched kidnapping.
Donald Trump vowed to wage war on the cartels. ‘If Mexico needs or requests help in cleaning
‘You need an army to defeat an army’
out these monsters, the United States stands ready, willing and able to get involved and do the job quickly and effectively,’ he tweeted yesterday.
‘The President of Mexico has made this a big issue, but the cartels have become so large and powerful that you sometimes need an army to defeat an army. This is the time for Mexico, with the help of the United States, to wage war on the drug cartels and wipe them off the face of the earth.’