Investigators are releasing more information in the case of four US citizens who were kidnapped last week while seeking health care in Mexico after getting caught up in a deadly shootout.
Two of the Americans missing since their violent abduction have been found dead and two others are alive, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.
The group had been missing since Friday, after being kidnapped in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, at the southernmost tip of Texas near the Gulf coast, according to the FBI. They were traveling in a white minivan with North Carolina plates.
"Shortly after crossing into Mexico, unidentified gunmen fired upon the passengers in the vehicle," the FBI said in a statement. "All four Americans were placed in a vehicle and taken from the scene by armed men."
Tamaulipas Gov. Américo Villarreal said one of the surviving Americans was wounded and the other was not, the AP reported. No additional details were shared about where or how they were found.
"Of the four, two of them are dead, one person is wounded and the other is alive and right now the ambulances and the rest of the security personnel are going for them for give the corresponding support," Villarreal said, per the AP.
The Americans have been identified as Latavia "Tay" McGee, Shaeed Woodard, Zindell Brown and Eric James Williams, ABC News reported.
Zalandria Brown, Zindell Brown's sister, told the AP that her brother and two friends were accompanying McGee, who was going to Mexico for a tummy tuck surgery. The group made the trip together in part to help split up the driving duties, she said.
"This is like a bad dream you wish you could wake up from," she said. "To see a member of your family thrown in the back of a truck and dragged, it is just unbelievable."
A US official with knowledge of the investigation told CNN it appeared to be a case of mistaken identity, and that the Americans were not the intended victims. According to the official, investigators believe a Mexican cartel likely mistook them for Haitian drug smugglers.
Reports indicate a Mexican woman was also killed during the shooting.
Cell phone video of the encounter posted to social media shows men with assault rifles loading four people into the bed of a white pickup truck in broad daylight. The footage shows at least one of the victims was alive; the others appear to be dead or wounded. It hasn't been confirmed whether the people in the video are the missing Americans, but it matches the FBI account of what happened.
Matamoros is located just across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas. The same day as the abduction, the US Department of State issued a "Level 4: Do Not Travel" advisory for Tamaulipas due to "crime and kidnapping."
"Organized crime activity – including gun battles, murder, armed robbery, carjacking, kidnapping, forced disappearances, extortion, and sexual assault – is common along the northern border," the government said. "Criminal groups target public and private passenger buses, as well as private automobiles traveling through Tamaulipas, often taking passengers and demanding ransom payments."
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