Survivors of deadly abduction return to U.S.

MEXICO

An American woman, abducted in Mexico last week, sits inside an ambulance after she was found alive in Ejido Longoreno, on the outskirts of Matamoros, Mexico, on Tuesday. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

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By Alfredo Peña, Fabiola Sánchez and Travis Loller

The Associated Press

CIUDAD VICTORIA, Mexico >> A road trip to Mexico for cosmetic surgery veered violently off course when four Americans were caught in a drug cartel shootout, leaving two dead and two held captive for days in a remote region of the Gulf Coast before they were rescued from a wood shack, officials said Tuesday.

Their minivan crashed and was fired on shortly after they crossed into the border city of Matamoros on Friday as drug cartel factions tore through the streets, the region’s governor said. A stray bullet also killed a Mexican woman about a block and a half away.

The four Americans were hauled off in a pickup, 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,” Tamaulipas Gov. Américo Villarreal said.

They were found Tuesday in a wooden shack, guarded by a man who was arrested, in a rural area east of Matamoros called Ejido Tecolote on the way to “Bagdad Beach,” according to the state’s chief prosecutor, Irving Barrios.

The surviving Americans were whisked back to U.S. soil Tuesday in Brownsville, the southernmost tip of Texas and just across the border from Matamoros.

The convoy of ambulances and SUVs was escorted by Mexican military Humvees and National Guard trucks with mounted machine guns.

A relative of one of the victims said Monday that the four had traveled together from the Carolinas so one of them could get a tummy tuck surgery from a doctor in Matamoros.

The governor said the wounded American, Eric Williams, had been shot in the left leg and that the injury was not life threatening.

“It’s quite a relief,” said Robert Williams, 38-year-old Eric’s brother, reached by phone Tuesday in North Carolina. “I look forward to seeing him again and actually being able to talk to him.”

Robert Williams was not sure if the other survivor, Latavia Burgess, was the one seeking the surgery.

The survivors were taken to Valley Regional Medical Center with an FBI escort, the Brownsville Herald reported. A spokesperson for the hospital referred all inquiries to the FBI.

The two dead — Shaeed Woodard, age 33, and Zindell Brown, in his mid-20s — will be turned over to U.S. authorities following forensic work at the Matamoros morgue, the governor said.