Family members identified the four US citizens who were shot and kidnapped in Mexico as a group of South Carolina friends on Monday.
According to relatives who spoke to ABC News and The Associated Press, Latavia “Tay” McGee, Shaeed Woodard, Zindell Brown, and Eric James Williams were travelling to Mexico for a cosmetic medical procedure when they were abducted on Friday.
“This is like a bad dream you wish you could wake up from,” said Brown’s sister Zalandria Brown. “To see a member of your family thrown in the back of a truck and dragged, it is just unbelievable.”
She stated that her brother’s two friends had accompanied a third friend to have tummy tuck surgery.
Barbara Burgess, 54, told ABC News that she was worried about her daughter’s trip to get cosmetic surgery and advised her not to go.
Her daughter, however, told her, “Ma, I’ll be okay,” before leaving on the journey on Wednesday.
McGee, 35, was set to undergo surgery on Friday. Burgess said she called her mother to say she was 15 minutes away from the doctor’s office.
That was the last time she heard from her daughter.
“Her phone just started going to voicemail,” Burgess told the news station.
The group had crossed the southern border from Texas into the notoriously dangerous city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, when their white minivan was attacked by gunmen.
Men in bulletproof vests push a woman into the flatbed of a white pickup truck before carrying and throwing a man into it, according to a shocking video of the alleged abduction posted online. They then dragged two more men across the ground and into the flatbed.
According to the footage and a witness, the woman sat up in the back, while two of the men appeared to be unresponsive — either injured or dead.
“The other two they dragged across the pavement, we don’t know if they were alive or dead,” said a witness who did not want to be identified in order to protect herself.
The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the return of the victims and the arrest of the gunmen.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said earlier Monday that the four Americans came to Mexico to buy medicine. He also confirmed that one Mexican citizen was killed in the shooting in broad daylight.
Matamoros, the city where the Americans were kidnapped, has been plagued by fighting between Gulf drug cartel factions for several years. Gunfights became so heated on Friday that the US Consulate issued a warning.
The State Department advises US citizens not to travel to Tamaulipas, but many Americans who live nearby cross the border to visit family and attend appointments.
