Concerned Friend Warned Police About Americans Feared Missing In Mexico

Cheryl Orange stayed at a motel in Brownsville, Texas, and grew concerned after she did not hear from the group that left for Mexico.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador giving a press conference on the kidnapping of four US citizens, two who have been killed, in the border city of Matamoros, State of Tamaulipas, at the National Palace in Mexico City, on March 7, 2023.

Source : AFP

New Delhi: The effort to rescue four Americans taken captive in Mexico in a kidnapping that left two dead came after a woman travelling with the group contacted police when they did not return to the U.S. side as expected.

Cheryl Orange, who decided to stay behind with the luggage, was expecting three out of four people to return within 15 minutes, after dropping off their companion, Latavia McGee, for cosmetic surgery in the Mexican border city of Matamoros, Orange told the Associated Press. 

Orange stayed at a motel in Brownsville, Texas, and grew concerned after she did not hear from the group that left for Mexico, when she called their phone was switched off. Orange told police she didn’t cross the border because she didn’t have her identification.

On Thursday, five friends drove to the southern tip of Texas in a rented minivan from South Carolina, according to a police report based on Orange’s account, reported AP. Four of them – Latavia McGee, Shaeed Woodard, Zindell Brown and Eric James Williams – left Friday morning around 8 am to go to Mexico.

Orange told AP that the friends went on the trip to accompany McGee for cosmetic surgery.

“She simply went for a cosmetic surgery, and that’s it. That’s all, and this happened to them,” Orange was quoted as saying by AP. 

Two US citizens missing since their abduction last week in the northern Mexican border city of Matamoros have been found dead and two others are alive, the state’s governor said Tuesday. One of the surviving US citizens was wounded and the other was not.

Mexican security forces on Tuesday morning, found the bodies of two of the four travellers in a wood shack southeast of the border city of Matamoros meanwhile, McGee and another friend whisked back to a US hospital. The attack in Matamoros also left a Mexican woman dead due to a stray bullet.

Eric Williams, one of the two surviving Americans suffered a gunshot wound to his leg that was not life-threatening, while Latavia McGee, was not injured. Americans Zindell Brown and Shaeed Woodard died in the attack. A 24-year-old man guarding them at the shack in the rural Ejido Tecolote area east of Matamoros on the way to part of the Gulf area called “Bagdad Beach,” was arrested at the scene.

The four American friends were kidnapped on Friday just after they drove into northeastern Mexico. Cheryl Orange who had stayed behind contacted the police after they did not return as expected. 

Mexican authorities said on Friday, the group was fired on and they crashed their van soon after they crossed into Matamoros by drug cartel factions. The Americans were taken away in a pickup truck, and Mexican authorities frantically searched as the cartel moved them around — even taking them to a medical clinic — “to create confusion and avoid efforts to rescue them,” the region’s governor, Américo Villarreal said Tuesday.

"We're very sorry to have this happen in our country and we send our condolences to the families of the victims, their friends, to the people of the United States," President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador told an earlier news conference, as per Reuters.

Mexican officials pledged to work with the US to find the perpetrators, but the incident threw a harsh spotlight on gang violence in Mexico and sparked angry reactions from some US lawmakers critical of Mexican efforts to fight crime.