The frantic effort to rescue four Americans taken captive in Mexico in a kidnapping that left two dead came after a woman traveling with the group contacted police when they did not return to the U.S. side as expected.
Cheryl Orange, who did not cross into Mexico with the others, told The Associated Press in a text message that her three friends were supposed to return within 15 minutes after dropping off their companion, Latavia McGee, for cosmetic surgery in the Mexican border city of Matamoros on Friday.
Orange stayed behind at a motel in Brownsville, Texas, and said she grew concerned as the hours passed and she did not hear from the others.
The five friends had driven a rented minivan from South Carolina on Thursday to the southern tip of Texas, according to a police report based on Orange's account. Four of them left Friday morning around 8 a.m. to go to Mexico.
Orange's statements and the report offer the most detailed account so far of what led to the kidnapping that saw McGee and another friend whisked back to a U.S. hospital Tuesday after Mexican authorities rescued them and found the bodies of their two friends at a wooden shack on the outskirts of Matamoros. The attack also left a Mexican woman dead.
Orange told police she didn't cross the border because she didn’t have her identification. She said she could not provide additional details because she was awaiting a call from McGee, who was to be released from a hospital in Brownsville. The other wounded American, Eric Williams, was also being treated at the hospital for a gunshot wound to the leg.
Americans Zindell Brown and Shaeed Woodard died in the attack.
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