Two Americans who survived a cartel kidnapping in Mexico that left two of their friends and an innocent local woman dead have revealed horrifying details of the attack.
Latavia Washington McGee and Eric Williams spoke with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Tuesday and revealed how the gunmen cornered their minivan, kidnapped the group and killed Shaeed Woodard and Zindell Brown.
The four U.S. citizens were driving in the Mexican border city of Matamoros on March 3 when Washington McGee says the group turned down a side street and heard a car horn. “Zindell was in the back seat, he said ‘don’t stop,’ he saw a gun,” Washington McGee explained.
When their white minivan was forced to stop, Woodard and Brown opened the vehicle’s doors and ran out but were both immediately gunned down, the surviving pair told CNN.
“When I jumped out on the driver’s side, that’s when I was shot in both legs,” Williams said, who appeared on CNN in a wheelchair and wearing a large leg brace.
Williams, 38, said he couldn’t see Shaeed because he was somewhere behind him, “but I could see Zindell’s back. He was hit two times and big chunks of meat was gone.”
The four Americans were loaded into the back of a pickup truck and at that stage, Brown and Woodard were still alive. A graphic video filmed by a bystander showed the harrowing scene as it unfolded.
The pair told CNN they arrived at a house about 10-15 minutes later where the kidnappers wore red “Diablo masks” and put “guns at our heads, telling us not to look up.”
Williams said some sort of cartel “investigator” interrogated the group, and “that’s when Shaeed said ‘I love y’all, I’m gone,’ and he died right there.” An emotional Williams revealed, “It was the last thing he said.”
After the initial interrogation, Williams was taken to a medical clinic for the bullet wounds in his legs. He told CNN, “They put my leg on a two-by-four and then they stitched it up... no pain medicine or nothing.” He said the stitches had all “busted out” by the end of the day.
Meanwhile, Washington McGee said she was being held in a room with Brown, “and he was fighting for his life and they didn’t do nothing.”
“I talked to him the whole time... just told him I was sorry because I asked him to come with me and he just said, ‘It’s okay I’m your brother, I’m supposed to be there for you, I love you.’ “ About an hour later, Brown was dead.
During the ordeal, Washington Brown heard familiar sounds coming from the phone of one of her captors. It was the video a bystander had filmed of her own kidnapping. The cartel member was watching it. He even showed it to the 35-year-old mother of six. “I just started crying, [thinking] looks like I’m never going home.”
Disturbingly, the cartel members also tried to make the two survivors have sex with each other. Washington Brown and Williams told CNN they refused and told the gunmen they were brother and sister and she was pregnant.
Mexican authorities have charged six men over the kidnapping including a 24-year-old who was allegedly a lookout at the property where the Americans were held in the Lagunona area, outside of Matamoros.
Five cartel members were also charged, the Attorney General’s Office of Tamaulipas announced, after they were found with their hands tied together with belts near a pickup truck. A note left on the truck’s windscreen claimed to be from the Gulf Cartel, which offered the suspects to authorities and apologized for their actions, ABC cites.
Tamaulipas Attorney General Irving Barrios Mojica said in a tweet that the kidnapping appeared to be a case of mistaken identity and that the group of Americans may have been confused with a rival Haitian gang. The Americans had reportedly crossed the border for a cosmetic surgery appointment for Washington Brown, and the three others were traveling with her.
Matamoros and the state of Tamaulipas are infamous for violence related to drug trafficking. The city is home to the Gulf Cartel, one of the most well-established illicit drug networks in the country. The Gulf Cartel is known for its ruthlessness and for terrorizing the local population.
The U.S. Department of State travel advisory lists Tamaulipas State under the Do Not Travel To section due to crime and kidnapping. The advice says the area is known for organized crime activity including “gun battles, murder, armed robbery, carjacking, kidnapping, forced disappearances, extortion, and sexual assault.” The advice states that “criminal groups target public and private passenger buses, as well as private automobiles.”
