One of two American victims who survived Mexico kidnapping talks to mom from hospital, is ‘doing ok’: report

One of the four Americans kidnapped during an ambush by a Mexican drug cartel last week was reportedly able to talk to her mother from a Texas hospital on Tuesday. 

LaTavia McGee, a resident of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and three other Americans were fired on shortly after they crossed the border on Friday into Matamoros, Mexico. 

Shaeed Woodard, 33, and Zindell Brown, mid-20s, were killed, while McGee and Eric Williams were kidnapped by several men wearing tactical vests and carrying assault rifles, according to the Associated Press. 

The four victims were found in a wooden shack in a rural area near Matamoros on Tuesday. The two survivors were transported to a hospital in Brownsville, Texas, while the State Department is working to recover the remains of the two deceased victims. 

FOUR AMERICANS KIDNAPPED IN MEXICO: WHAT WE KNOW

Barbara Burgess, McGee’s mother, told WDPE that a nurse from the hospital called her and she was able to talk to her daughter on Tuesday. 

“She’s alive. I talked to her. I talked to her. The nurse at the hospital called and let me talk to her,” Burgess told the local South Carolina news outlet. 

“She was crying. I asked her how she was doing. She doing okay. She was crying because her brother got killed and she watched him die. She watched two of them die. They died in front of her.” 

The four were reportedly traveling to Matamoros so that one of them could undergo a cosmetic procedure. 

Mexican authorities believe that the shooting and kidnapping resulted from “confusion, not a direct attack,” according to the Associated Press. Rival factions of the Gulf drug cartel have been at war in streets of Matamoros for years.