MEXICO KIDNAP VID
Horror of Americans forced into pickup
Distressing video emerged Monday showing the moment four kidnapped US citizens were forced into the back of a pickup truck after being shot at in Mexico in a possible case of mistaken identity.
The Americans — identified as Latavia “Tay” McGee, Shaeed Woodard, Zindell Brown and Eric James Williams — traveled to Mexico so one of them could get tummytuck surgery when they were abducted Friday, relatives said.
The group of friends from South Carolina had crossed over the border from Texas into the notoriously dangerous city of Matamoros in Tamaulipas when their white minivan came under fire and they were grabbed by gunmen.
It was not immediately known where they were taken, or in what condition.
A US official familiar with the incident told CNN the group was attacked by mistake and they were not the intended targets.
The FBI San Antonio Division office confirmed the kidnapping Friday. The federal agency is offering a $50,000 reward for the return of the victims and the arrest of the gunmen.
Dragged away
Video that purports to show the Americans’ kidnapping involves men wearing bulletproof vests dragging a person across the ground and roughly pushing a woman into the flatbed of a white pickup truck.
The suspects then grab two men who appear to be wounded or dead and toss their bodies into the same flatbed.
“This is like a bad dream you wish you could wake up from,” said
Brown’s sister Zalandria
Brown. “To see a member of your family thrown in the back of a truck and dragged, it is just unbelievable.”
McGee’s mother Barbara Burgess, 54, told ABC News that she was concerned about her daughter’s trip and warned her not to go. But her daughter told her “Ma, I’ll be OK,” before leaving on the journey Wednesday, she recalled.
McGee was scheduled to have the surgery on Friday. She called her mother to say she was 15 minutes away from the doctor’s office, Burgess said.
That was the last time she heard from her daughter. “Her phone just started going to voicemail,” the mom said. Matamoros is home to warring factions of the Gulf drug cartel, and the Americans’ kidnapping there followed gun battles Friday that were so fierce, the US Consulate issued an alert about the danger. The State Department’s travel warning for Tamaulipas urges US citizens not to travel there.
However, as the area is on the border, a border city, Americans who live in Brownsville, Texas, and other towns in the area often drive across to visit family, attend medical appointments or to shop.