Mexico Kidnapping Victims Share Horrific Details

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The two survivors of the horrific incident in which four Black Americans were attacked and kidnapped by a drug cartel in Mexico, are sharing horrific details about what they endured, including witnessing the deaths of their friends.

“They didn’t deserve that. None of us deserved it. But we’re alive – we have a lot of recovering to do,” LaTavia Washington McGee told CNN‘s Anderson Cooper  Tuesday about the deaths of Shaeed Woodard and Zindell Brown.

Washington McGee was interviewed alongside her brother Eric Williams and she recalled the moment the group was descended upon by the group of cartel members, who investigators believe mistook them for Haitian drug smugglers, as well as what happened after they were taken to another location.

The survivors told CNN that the group was driving when they heard a car horn behind them and spotted a gun before shots were fired.

“Zindell and Shaeed, they jumped up to run and they were gunned down,” Williams said.

As someone started to beat on the car window with a gun, Williams jumped out of the driver’s side. “That’s when I was shot on both legs,” Williams said.

Williams and Washington McGee told CNN Brown and Woodward were both still alive when their limp bodies were dragged onto the truck bed, but after they were taken to another spot, Shaeed died.

“That’s where Shaeed said, ‘I love y’all, and I’m gone.’ And he died right there,” Williams said to CNN.

As Woodard lay dying in the back of the pickup truck, “I told him I was sorry,” Washington McGee recalled.

“He said he loved us and he was gone. It was the last thing he said,” Williams said, through tears.

In fact, Washington McGee and Williams said they were taken to several different locations while blindfolded over the days they were held captive. Williams said those locations included a house where armed men in red “Diablo” masks were “pointing the guns to our head, telling us not to look up.” He also said he was taken to a clinic where his badly wounded legs were placed on a splint and “stitched up,” but no one even bothered to check and see if bullets were still inside them.

“No pain medicine or nothing. They just stitched it up,” Williams said.

Meanwhile, Washington McGee said she was left in a room with Brown while he was dying from his injuries.

“He was fighting for his life and they didn’t do nothing,” she said. “I talked to him the whole time…I just told him sorry because I asked him to come with me. He was like, ‘It’s okay. I’m your brother. I’m supposed to be there for you. I love you.’”

Washington McGee said her captives said they would take Brown to a hospital but “they came back maybe an hour later and he was dead.”

The brother and sister also recalled how their kidnappers tried to make them have sex with each other in front of them, but they pushed back and informed their captors that they are related and that McGee was pregnant.

Despite how cruel, depraved, and barbaric the kidnappers sound, Washington McGee described them as sophisticated criminals who knew how to stay a “step ahead” of law enforcement. She said she didn’t think they would ever have been found before the kidnappers dropped them off in the wooden shack where authorities eventually discovered them on March 7.

“They had police scanners and all types of stuff in their trucks,” she said. “They knew what was going on. They were always a step ahead. So I was like, they’re never gonna find us like this.”

Before they were finally rescued, Washington McGee said she tried to escape twice “for my brothers to have the proper burial and for us to go back home to our family and kids.”

The more we learn about what Williams, Washington McGee, and their companions experienced, the more this event resembles one of the most dreadful, frightful, and traumatic true crime horror stories ever told.  Thankfully, the two survived, but Washington McGee is right when she says this was an experience no one deserves to suffer through. We wish the survivors healing and justice.