Americans’ fun road trip to Mexico became days of horror

LAKE CITY, S.C. >> It was supposed to be a fun road trip to Mexico, a postpandemic adventure for a group of childhood friends.

One was treating herself to cosmetic surgery after having six children. It was a 34th birthday celebration for another.

They rented a white van in South Carolina and set out on the nearly 22-hour trip, shooting silly videos and driving straight through to Brownsville, on the tip of Texas.

“Good morning America!” Eric Williams said into the camera in the early morning hours after the all-night drive. “Mexico, here we come.”

But once they got to Mexico, the trip took a terrible turn. Two members of the group would never make it home, victims of the ruthless Gulf Cartel, a drug gang tied to brutal killings and kidnappings in the violent border city of Matamoros, a city of a half a million people that has long been a stronghold of the powerful cartel.

There could hardly be a worse border town to pick for a fun adventure.

It all started when Latavia Mcgee, booked the cosmetic surgery with a doctor she’d been to before, in 2021. Dr. Roberto Chavez Medina advertisements on Facebook and Tiktok have a strong following by American women.

It’s a common story — people often leave the U.S. f or all sorts of medical treatment; costs in Mexico can be more than 50% cheaper than in the United States.

Mcgee’s appointment was within days of her cousin Shaeed Woodard’s 34th birthday. Friends Zindell Brown and Cheryl Orange rounded out the group of five, most of whom had grown up together in Lake City, South Carolina, a town of fewer than 6,000 people.

Once they got to the border, they rented rooms at a Motel 6 off the highway in Brownsville, a lush town with a high poverty rate on the Rio Grande where parrots squawk from palm trees.

The friends set out early Friday to cross an international bridge that spans the two countries, thinking they were headed to see the doctor right on the other side. Orange stayed at the motel in Brownsville because she forgot to bring her ID to cross the border.

“They went to drop her off and was supposed to be back within 15 minutes,” Orange said.

But the clinic had moved to a new location several blocks away.

It’s not clear what happened next: perhaps the group got lost. The Mexican state of Tamaulipas is the subject of a U.S. State Department warning to avoid travel due to violent crime and kidnappings, but the friends may not have known — Williams’ mother said she didn’t think her son had ever been out of the U.S.

Hours passed, and on the U.S. side of the border, Orange contacted the Brownsville police, concerned something bad had happened.

Her worst fears would come to pass.

Just a few miles across the border, 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. Shots rang out.

Brown and Woodard were hit by bullets and appeared to have died immediately. Williams was shot in the leg.

Video on social media showed men forcing Mcgee into the bed of a pickup truck, then going back to drag a wounded Williams and the bodies of their two friends across the road and into the truck as onlookers in traffic sat in their cars eerily silent. One witness said no one wanted to draw the gunmen’s attention.

The truck barreled off. A Mexican woman who had been hit by a stray bullet, 33-year-old Areli Pablo Servando, was left to die on the street.

When Mexican authorities arrived on the scene, they found social security cards and credit cards belonging to the group of friends nside the van, marked by a bullet hole in the driver’s side window. The U.S. consulate, only blocks away, issued an alert, warning its employees to avoid the area until further notice because of a deadly shooting downtown.

The doctor at the clinic later told investigators he thought it was strange his patient hadn’t shown up for the procedure, which can run up to $3,000, but his office had only communicated with her electronically. The clinic was only about a four-minute drive away from where their van had crashed.

The crash would be the start of some of the most terrifying days of the surviving friends’ lives.

The cartel members drove them from place to place around the city on a harrowing ride, stopping shortly after the shooting at a medical clinic.

A doctor told investigators that two men with assault rifles busted in through a back door and threatened to kill staff if they didn’t treat a wounded person with them. The gunmen and their hostages stayed three hours at the clinic and then left, according to Mexican investigative documents viewed by The Associated Press.