Sister grieves for American killed in Mexico

LAKE CITY, S.C. — Prepping for his first trip out of the country, 28-year-old Zindell Brown of Lake City, S.C., had something more than nerves. Perhaps it was a premonition about the trip he and several friends were taking to Mexico.

“He said, ‘Something, it just doesn’t feel right,’ ” his older sister Zalandria Brown told the Associated Press over the phone. “(That was) the last thing we talked about.”

Hopping into protection mode for the man so close to her that she called him her “hip bone,” Brown urged her brother to not take the trip planned earlier this month. But Brown wasn’t surprised her sibling shook off the feeling and offered to drive with his group of childhood friends on a road trip to Mexico, where one was scheduled for cosmetic surgery and another planned to celebrate his 34th birthday.

The inside of a rented white van would be the last place Brown would see her brother alive. Sometime during the nearly 22-hour trip from South Carolina to Brownsville, Brown watched a video posted online of Zindell smiling into the camera.

But in Mexico, the group was attacked. Around midday, a vehicle crashed into the group’s van. Several men with tactical vests and assault rifles arrived in another vehicle and surrounded them, according to Mexican police reports.

Two members of the group — Zindell Brown and Shaeed Woodard — were shot and killed. Eric Williams was shot in the leg, and he and fellow survivor Latavia McGee were loaded into a pickup, according to video posted on social media.

Even before she viewed footage of the ambush that quickly circulated online, Zalandria Brown said she began to have a sickening feeling that her brother was gone.

“That was the other part of my soul,” she said.

She called her brother the male version of herself. Gone is her game hunting partner and the “cool uncle” her two teenage sons looked up to.

“He always put a smile on everybody’s face. He was always joking and playing and laughing around,” she said.

In the days leading up to the trip, Zindell spent time at home, playing video games — a break from the other work his hands were known for: carpentry. Zindell picked up woodworking skills from his father, who wanted to train him in the family craft.

“He had so many skills. He could do carpentry work,” she said, adding: “He did roofing work. He could do everything you could think of when it came to building a house. My father trained him to do all of that.”