An attack on an American family in Tamaulipas left a 13-year-old boy dead and three other family members wounded on Saturday night.
Bound for Oklahoma, the family was returning from spending the holidays in San Luis Potosà when armed men traveling in two vehicles ordered them to stop in the town of Ciudad Mier, near the border with Texas.
The family, which was also traveling in two vehicles, refused to stop for the attackers, who then rammed the victims’ cars to force them to stop. The gunmen opened fire, killing the child and wounding two adults and a 10-year-old boy.
The minor killed in the attack was a U.S. citizen, as is the wounded boy, while the adults have permanent residency in the United States. Authorities reported on Sunday that the wounded were in stable condition at a hospital in Cerralvo, Nuevo León.
Although Mexican authorities have not released information about the motive for the attack or the criminal affiliations of the perpetrators, the newspaper El Diario attributed it to members of the Northeast Cartel due to the recent U.S. State Department travel alert, which advises U.S. citizens not to travel to Tamaulipas due to the gang’s activity in the state.
The cartel’s initials — CDN — were scrawled onto a window of one of vehicles found at the scene.
The incident was the second high-profile attack on U.S. citizens in Mexico in the last three months. On November 4, nine women and children were massacred in a highway attack in Sonora.
El Diario reported that another U.S. family recently posted on social media that it had been threatened at gunpoint by presumed members of the Northeast Cartel.
