Forensic Experts Recreate Kidnapping of U.S. Citizen in Matamoros

"Sol Prendido" for Borderland Beat

Forensic experts from the Tamaulipas Prosecutor's Office reconstructed the moment in which armed civilians shot the foreigners and then loaded them into a van.

Specialists from the Attorney General's Office of the State of Tamaulipas (FGJT) conducted a forensic investigation in the area where four Americans were attacked by alleged members of the Gulf Cartel on March 3 in the border city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, resulting in the death of two of them: Zindell Brown and Shaeed Woodard.

Three weeks after the incident, which occurred on Lauro Villar and Primera streets in the border municipality, officials of the FGJT, agents of the National Guard, State Police and the Secretariat of the Navy blocked the streets surrounding the sector to prevent the passage of motorists and pedestrians.

After the closure of the roads, forensic experts were present to recreate, with the support of personnel, every moment of the episode where the group of North Americans who had entered Mexico through the "Ignacio Zaragoza" International Bridge that connects the Matamoros territory with the city of Brownsville, Texas, in the United States, were shot at.

The experts used five units to stage the attack and gather every piece of information to continue with the investigations that began last Tuesday, when Latavia Washington McGee and Eric James Williams were found alive, as were the bodies of their two remaining friends, in a wooden house in the Tecolote community.

At least four times, the authorities reconstructed a scene similar to the one that could be observed in a video that was recorded and spread in social networks and that shows the moment in which armed civilians shot at the foreigners to then put them in a white GMC Sierra pickup truck and transfer them to different points of the town until leaving them in the rural sector.

In the recreation, men followed a pickup truck similar to the one used by the Americans and when they destabilized them, they got out of the unit and were shot at, then placed in a pickup truck.

For this case, in which there was also pressure from the U.S. government, the bodies of the U.S. citizens were repatriated and six people were arrested, who have already been indicted and handed over by the same criminal organization.

In addition, at least two clinics and a Civil Protection ambulance were seized for being related to the crime.

However, to date, no further information has been provided on the security crisis that has strained relations between the Mexican and U.S. governments.

The commercial exchange between the regions of South Texas and the Tamaulipas city has not suffered any damage, according to a border businessmen report, who assure that families continue to visit businesses, clinics and various activity centers.

Oscar Martinez Torres, president of the Union of Merchants and Businessmen of the Northeast (Ucen), assured that despite the violence alerts in certain Mexican regions, U.S. citizens close to Matamoros continue to pass through the border city because they know the conditions that exist and the areas where they can transit.

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