It is truly heartbreaking news that two innocent Americans were killed and two more were taken as victims of the Mexican drug cartel’s ambush last week.
According to reports, LaTavia McGee was one of the lucky two survivors who were able to make contact with her mother from a Texas hospital.
The Associated Press Reports, a group of four Americans traveling to Mexico to seek health care were kidnapped by heavily armed men and thrown into a pickup truck last week, officials from both countries said.
They were traveling Friday in a white minivan with North Carolina license plates. As soon as they entered Matamoros from Brownsville, near the Gulf coast at the southernmost tip of Texas, the FBI said they came under fire.
This scene illustrates the terror that has dominated Matamoros for years, a city dominated by rival factions of the Gulf drug cartel. Amid the violence, thousands of Mexicans have disappeared in Tamaulipas state alone.
However there has been a good development in this story as two of the kidnapped Americans have been returned to the United States.
An American kidnapped by a Mexican drug cartel last week was reportedly able to talk to her mother on Tuesday from a Texas hospital.
On Tuesday, four victims were found in a wooden shack in a rural area near Matamoros. The two survivors were transported to a hospital in Brownsville, Texas, while the State Department is working to recover the remains of the two deceased victims.
McGee’s mother, Barbara Burgess, told WDPE that a hospital nurse called her on Tuesday and spoke with her daughter.
Burgess told the local South Carolina news outlet. “She’s alive. I talked to her. I talked to her. The nurse at the hospital called and let me talk to her, She was crying. I asked her how she was doing. She said she is doing okay. She was crying because her brother got killed and she watched him die. She watched two of them die. They died in front of her.”
It is a sad day and investigation is underway as to how this was able to take place. The American people are calling for tougher measures to be taken against the cartels and many are calling for the army to be sent in. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of LaTavia McGee and her three companions, who were victims of this senseless act of violence. The only silver lining so far is that LaTavia McGee has been able to talk to her mother from the Texas hospital – though we hope that she makes a swift and full recovery.
Let’s continue this conversation, in the comments below.
