Last victim of Mexico border killings buried as others leave
COLONIA LEBARON, MEXICO >> Family and friends said goodbye Saturday to the last victim of a cartel ambush that killed nine American women and children from a Mormon community in northern Mexico where cartels have disrupted an otherwise peaceful, rural existence.
In the attack Monday, Christina Langford Johnson jumped out of her vehicle and waved her hands to show she was no threat. Children who survived the assault told family members she was shot anyway, twice in the heart. Her daughter Faith Marie Johnson, 7 months old, was found unharmed in a car seat.
Her funeral, the third in as many days, culminates an outpouring of grief in the closely knit community with family ties in two Mexican states and across the border in many western U.S. states.
What had been a largely tranquil existence in a fertile valley ringed by rugged mountains and desert scrub about 70 miles (112 kilometers) south of the border with Arizona became increasingly dangerous in recent years. Cartels exerted their power and battled each other in a region that is a drug smuggling hotbed.
More than 300 people overflowed the pews of the local church in LeBaron on Saturday, where white flowers spelled out “mommy” next to a heart of roses.
The victim’s mother, Amelia Langford, eulogized her daughter as a “mama hen” who was fiercely protective of her six children.
“Mexico was her paradise,” the mother said.
Others remembered Christina, who would have turned 32 this month, as a lover of nature, wildflowers and the piano. She and the other eight killed in a brutal attack Monday were dual U.S.-Mexican citizens, members of the twin Mormon communities of LeBaron in Chihuahua state and La Mora in the state of Sonora.
Mourners softly sang hymns while men used straps to lower the simple wooden coffin into the ground.
Jeremiah Garret Langford, who presided over the funeral, thanked mourners who had traveled from La Mora, saying they had traversed “a war zone.”
La Mora, a hamlet of about 300 people where residents raise cattle and cultivate pomegranates, has been deeply scarred by the killings.
The attack occurred as the women traveled with their children to visit relatives. Many community members are now wondering whether they should stay or flee the cartel presence, a constant both there and in the sibling community of Colonia LeBaron on the other side of the Sierra Madre mountains.