A Chicago teenager who was shot in the head while visiting family in Mexico has been transferred to a hospital in Texas, according to the U.S. State Department and family members.
Jason Peña, 14, has been in a medically induced coma since he and three other members of his family were attacked on a highway on Dec. 27 in the northwestern state of Durango. Jason is the lone survivor of the attack.
On Thursday, Jason was flown on a private plane to Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston where he will receive treatment. “He is in critical condition in ICU and on life support,” his mother, Ana Cabral, said in a post on the fundraising site Spotfund.
Local authorities are investigating the attack, which has generated indignation in the Duranguense community in the Chicago area, according to the newspaper El Siglo de Durango.
A birthday celebration becomes a tragedy
Jason, his father Vicente Peña Jr. and his younger brother drove 3,000 miles from Chicago to the municipality of Santiago Papasquiaro in Durango, where they planned to celebrate Jason’s 14th birthday with family, according to Telemundo Chicago.
Family spokesperson and lawyer Julie Contreras said that two days before the birthday, Jason jumped into his father’s car as his dad, his uncle and a cousin left to buy food and drinks in Santiago Papasquiaro.
When the group had not returned after two hours, Vicente Peña Sr. — Jason’s grandfather — alerted the authorities.
Shortly thereafter, police located the vehicle, an SUV with Illinois license plates, along the Francisco Zarco Highway. All four occupants had been shot; the three adults — Vicente Jr., 38, Antonio Fernández, 44 (Vicente’s brother who flew from Chicago to join the festivities), and Jorge Eduardo Vargas, 22 — were pronounced dead at the scene.
Vicente Jr., Jason and Fernández were all U.S. citizens, Contreras said, and Jason was a student at Prairie Hills Junior High School in Markham, Illinois.
Jason was taken to a public hospital in Durango city, the state capital, but the hospital was not equipped to treat the severe brain injury. Cabral flew to Durango to be with Jason and her other son and began working to fly Jason to Houston for better care and to ensure his safety, Contreras said, according to the Chicago Tribune.
The U.S. State Department told USA Today that they had been in touch with the victims’ families and confirmed that Mexican authorities are conducting an investigation.
Contreras, through her NGO United Giving Hope, worked with the family to arrange for the private plane to carry Jason back to the U.S., while also alerting the public to a fake GoFundMe page that had been opened in Jason’s name.
The boy’s grandfather, Vicente Sr., spoke to Chicago television station WMAQ-TV in Spanish and said the shooting had wrecked their family.
“I feel very devastated because they wiped out my entire family,” he told the outlet. “It was a massacre … because my son was shot four times in the head and once in the shoulder.”
In the statement to USA Today, the U.S. State Department said “Durango, Mexico, has a Level 2 Exercise Increased Caution Travel advisory due to crime.”
The State Department lists Durango among the Mexican states with travel cautions, warning of violent crime and drug activity. Regions in western Durango, where the shooting occurred, are considered so dangerous that U.S. government employees are prohibited from traveling there.
With reports from El Siglo de Durango, Latinus, Chicago Tribune, Telemundo Chicago, USA Today and Fox News
