A Shocking update of the four Americans traveling in the Mexican city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas has been released. One of the victims has been identified as Zindell Brown by his older sister- Zalandria Brown of Florence, South Carolina. We have also learned that two of the four Americans kidnapped are dead.
As reported on Fox News,
“Tamaulipas Gov. Américo Villarreal said Tuesday that one of the surviving Americans was wounded and the other was not, while two of the four U.S. citizens who traveled to Mexico were found dead.”
The four Americans were traveling from Brownsville, Texas to Matamoros, Mexico, with one of them seeking a tummy tuck surgery. Zalandria said her brother expressed his hesitancy over the trip.
According to a witness, a vehicle collided with the white minivan near an intersection, and, shortly after, an SUV rolled up and several armed men hopped out and opened fire. The armed men forced one woman, who was able to walk, into the back of their truck and carried another victim, who moved his head, to the truck. The remaining two victims were reportedly dragged across the pavement.
As previously reported on Trending Newsfeed:
Four U.S. citizens were kidnapped in Mexico last week in a shootout that killed at least one Mexican citizen, according to U.S. and Mexican officials. The four were in a white minivan with North Carolina license plates and were crossing into the city of Matamoros from Brownsville, Texas when they came under fire.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that the four were going to buy medicine and ended up in the crossfire between two armed groups. A video posted to social media shows armed men loading the four into the bed of a pickup truck. One was alive and sitting up, but the others appeared to be either dead or wounded.
Matamoros is home to warring factions of the Gulf drug cartel, and violence has been so bad that the U.S. Consulate issued an alert about the danger and local authorities warned people to shelter in place. It is not clear how the abductions could have been connected to that violence.
The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for the victims’ return and the arrest of the culprits. U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar said in a statement Monday that the Americans were kidnapped at gunpoint and an “innocent” Mexican citizen died in the attack. He said various U.S. justice agencies were working with their Mexican counterparts to recover the missing U.S. citizens.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday that President Joe Biden had been informed of the situation, but declined to answer other questions, citing privacy concerns. Tamaulipas state police said people had been killed and injured Friday, but not how many.
Victims of violence in Matamoros and other large border cities of Tamaulipas often go uncounted, because the cartels have a history of taking bodies of their own with them. Local media often avoid reporting on such incidents out of safety concerns, creating an information vacuum.
The State Department’s travel warning for Tamaulipas warns U.S. citizens not to travel there. However, being a border city, U.S. citizens who live in Brownsville or elsewhere in Texas frequently cross to visit family, attend medical appointments, or shop.
This is not the first time U.S. citizens have been swept up in Mexican violence. Three U.S. siblings disappeared near Matamoros in October 2014 and were later found shot to death and burned. They had disappeared two weeks earlier while visiting their father in Mexico.
