MEXICO CITY — An American teenager was fighting for his life after he was shot in a nighttime ambush on a car in northern Mexico that killed his father and uncle, both U.S. citizens, and a Mexican relative, a spokesperson for the family said Wednesday.

The teenager, Jason Peña, of Chicago, was shot in the back of the head Friday and remains in critical condition, the spokesperson for the family, Julie Contreras, a pastor and director of United Giving Hope, a Chicago-based advocacy group, said in a phone interview from Illinois.

When Jason was found by police hours after the attack Dec. 27 in the state of Durango, she said, he was lying unconscious outside the vehicle, but “his heart was still beating.”

“We have a fighter on our hands,” she said.

The teenager, who turned 14 on Monday, was airlifted Wednesday to Houston from the city of Durango, which is about 600 miles south of El Paso, Texas. He was accompanied by his mother, a nurse who had flown in from the Chicago area, Contreras said.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy on Wednesday confirmed the deaths of two American citizens in the municipality of Santiago Papasquiaro, where the attack took place. It said in a statement that officials were “aware of reports of the injury of a minor” and that the embassy was assisting the victims’ families. Mexican authorities were investigating the attack, the spokesperson said.

A spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office for Durango state said the episode was under investigation but could offer no further information.

The killings come amid a number of recent attacks against Americans in Mexico.

Just weeks ago, a couple visiting from California were killed in the state of Michoacán, where drug gangs have battled to dominate the local economy and drug-trafficking routes. Security agents found the couple in a bullet-ridden car.

In May, the bodies of an American man and two Australian brothers were found in a water hole after they disappeared during a surfing and camping trip in the state of Baja California.

And in March 2023, two Americans who had crossed the border in a group of four friends were abducted and killed by gunmen in the border town of Matamoros, in Tamaulipas state.

Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has vowed to tackle the violence racking the country. “Rest assured that we are going to bring crime rates down,” she said last month.