Two of the four US citizens violently kidnapped in Mexico during a terrifying caught-on-camera cartel shootout Friday have been found dead and two others alive, officials announced Tuesday.
The deceased were identified as Shaeed Woodard and Zindell Brown, a US official told CNN.
Woodard and Brown had traveled to Mexico from South Carolina with Latavia “Tay” McGee and Eric James Williams so McGee could undergo a tummy tuck procedure.
McGee and Woodard were cousins, relatives told The Post Tuesday.
Williams was also shot in the left leg but the wound was not life-threatening, Tamaulipas Gov. Américo Villarreal said.
Williams and McGee were taken to Valley Regional Medical Center Tuesday with an FBI escort, the Brownsville Herald reported.
The foursome was abducted at gunpoint in broad daylight on March 3 — shortly after they crossed the border into the crime-ridden city of Matamoros, located in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas.
They apparently found themselves in the cartel crosshairs after getting lost on the way to McGee’s medical procedure, CNN reported.
One person has been arrested in the harrowing ordeal.
Shocking video of the abduction shows several gunmen in bulletproof vests ambushing the white minivan with North Carolina license plates the group was traveling in — before forcing them into the back of a pickup truck.
Tamaulipas state chief prosecutor Irving Barrios said authorities believe that it was “confusion, not a direct attack.”
Matamoros’ reputation for gun violence amid cartel wars had led to initial speculation that the abduction was drug-related, but a source close to the investigation told the Dallas Morning News the kidnapping may have been a case of mistaken identity.
The four tourists were found in a shack in a rural area east of Matamoros called Ejido Tecolote on the way to the Gulf coast known as “Bagdad Beach,” Barrios said.
Four US citizens from South Carolina were abducted in Matamoros
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The bodies of Woodard and Brown will be turned over to US authorities following forensic work at the Matamoros morgue in the coming hours, Gov. Villarreal said.
The bodies of Woodard and Brown will be turned over to US authorities following forensic work at the Matamoros morgue in the coming hours, Gov. Villarreal said.
“This is like a bad dream you wish you could wake up from,” Brown’s sister Zalandria Brown said Tuesday of the ordeal.
“To see a member of your family thrown in the back of a truck and dragged, it is just unbelievable.”
One Mexican national was killed in the carnage.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Tuesday that one person was in custody.
Meanwhile, gunfights became so intense following the kidnapping that the US Consulate issued an alert.