4 kidnapped Americans crossed into Mexico to receive medical attention

Four Americans who traveled to Mexico last week to seek medical attention were caught up in a deadly shootout and kidnapped by heavily armed men who threw them into the back of a pickup truck, officials from both countries said Monday.

The four were traveling Friday in a white minivan with North Carolina license plates. They were attacked shortly after entering the city of Matamoros from Brownsville, in the southern tip of Texas near the Gulf Coast, the FBI said in a statement Sunday.

“The four Americans were placed in a vehicle and driven from the scene by armed men,” the FBI said. The office is offering a $50,000 reward for the return of the victims and the arrest of the kidnappers.

Zalandria Brown of Florence, South Carolina, said she has been in contact with the FBI and local officials after learning that her younger brother, Zindell Brown, is one of the four victims.

“This is like a bad dream that you wish you could wake up from,” he said in a phone interview. “To see a member of your family thrown in the back of a truck and dragged away, it’s just unbelievable.”

Zalandria Brown said her brother, who lives in Myrtle Beach, and two friends had accompanied a third friend who was going to Mexico for a tummy tuck. A doctor who advertises these types of surgeries in Matamoros did not return calls seeking comment.

Brown said the group was very close and they all made the trip in part to help split up the driving duties. They were aware of the dangers in Mexico, he added, and his brother had expressed some doubts.

“Zindell kept saying, ‘We shouldn’t go down,'” Brown said.

Video posted to social media Friday showed men with assault rifles and tan body armor loading the four people into the bed of a white pickup truck in broad daylight. One was alive and sitting up, but the others appeared to be dead or wounded. At least one person appeared to lift their head off the pavement before being dragged into the truck.

The scene illustrates the terror that has reigned for years in Matamoros, a city dominated by factions of the powerful Gulf drug cartel that often feud with each other. Amid the violence, thousands of Mexicans have disappeared in the state of Tamaulipas alone.

The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said on Monday that “there was a confrontation between groups and they were arrested,” without offering details. He originally said that the four Americans came to Mexico to buy medicine.

Tamaulipas Chief Prosecutor Irving Barrios told reporters that a Mexican woman was killed in the shootings on Friday. He did not specify if she was killed in the same shooting where the kidnapping occurred.

A woman driving in Matamoros who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation said she witnessed what appeared to be the shooting and kidnapping.

The white minivan was struck by another vehicle near an intersection, then shots were heard, the woman said. Another van pulled up and several armed men got out.

“Suddenly they (the gunmen) were in front of us,” he said. “I went into shock, no one honked, no one moved. Everyone must have been thinking the same thing: ‘If we move, they’ll see us, or they’ll shoot at us.’”

[Con información de The Associated Press]

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