According to officials, what started as a road trip to Mexico for cosmetic surgery took a harrowing turn when four Americans got embroiled in a drug cartel shootout.

The violence resulted in the death of two individuals, while the other two were held captive for several days in an isolated area of the Gulf coast before being rescued from a wooden shack, the Associated Press reported.

As per the governor of the region, while drug cartel factions were rampaging through the streets of Matamoros, a group’s minivan crashed and was shot at, soon after crossing the border on Friday. Additionally, a Mexican woman about a block and a half away was also tragically killed by a stray bullet.

The drug cartel abducted the four American individuals in a pickup truck, and as the authorities in Mexico searched frantically for them, the cartel kept relocating them, even taking them to a medical clinic, “to create confusion and avoid efforts to rescue them,” Tamaulipas Gov. Américo Villarreal said, as reported by the AP.

According to Irving Barrios, the chief prosecutor of the state, the individuals were discovered on Tuesday, held captive in a wooden shack located in a rural area called Ejido Tecolote, east of Matamoros on the route towards the Gulf’s “Bagdad Beach.” They were being guarded by a man who was subsequently arrested.

On Tuesday, the surviving American individuals were rapidly transported to U.S. territory, reaching Brownsville, located at the southernmost point of Texas, just across the border from Matamoros.

The convoy, which comprised ambulances and SUVs, was escorted by Mexican military Humvees and National Guard trucks, which had mounted machine guns.

As per a relative of one of the victims, the four individuals had traveled together from the Carolinas with the purpose of one of them undergoing a tummy tuck surgery from a doctor based in Matamoros.

Written by staff