A road trip to Mexico for cosmetic surgery ended with two Americans dead - and two others found alive in a rural area near the Gulf coast - after a violent shootout and abduction that was captured on video, officials said Tuesday.
The surviving Americans were back on U.S. soil after being sped to the border near Brownsville, the southernmost tip of Texas, in a convoy of ambulances and SUVs escorted by Mexican military Humvees and National Guard trucks with mounted machine guns.
The two dead will be turned over to U.S. authorities following forensic work at the Matamoros morgue in the coming hours, the governor said. The U.S. citizens were found in a shack in rural area east of Matamoros called Ejido Tecolote on the way to the Gulf coast known as "Bagdad Beach," according to Tamaulipas state chief prosecutor Irving Barrios.
The gunmen walked one of the Americans into the bed of a white pickup, then dragged and loaded the three others. Terrified civilian motorists sat silently in their cars, hoping not to draw their attention. Two of the victims appeared to be motionless. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the people responsible would be punished. He referenced arrests made in the 2019 killings of nine U.S.-Mexican dual citizens in Sonora near the U.S. border.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, said "The cartels are responsible for the deaths of Americans." "The DEA and the FBI are doing everything possible to dismantle and disrupt and ultimately prosecute the leaders of the cartels and the entire networks that they depend on."
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