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Relatives say at least 5 US citizens killed in north Mexico Nine members of Mormon family with U.S. citizenship killed in attack in northern Mexico; Trump offers support
(about 11 hours later)
MEXICO CITY — Relatives say at least five U.S. citizens, including four children, who live in a religious community in northern Mexico were killed in a shooting attack they suspect may have been a case of mistaken identity by drug cartel gunmen. MEXICO CITY — Assailants have killed at least nine members of a fundamentalist Mormon family in northern Mexico, authorities reported Tuesday, burning alive a woman and her children in a brutal assault that highlighted the growing danger posed by organized-crime groups around the country.
As many as 13 other members of La Mora — a decades-old settlement in Sonora state founded as part of an offshoot of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — were missing after the attack on a convoy of three SUVs carrying community members, said a relative who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals. Alfonso Durazo, the minister of public security, told a news conference that three women and six children were killed. They were part of a community of U.S.-Mexican dual citizens.
The relative said he had located the burned-out, bullet-ridden SUV containing the remains of his nephew’s wife and her four children — twin 6-month old babies and two other children aged 8 and 10. The vicious attack stunned a nation still reeling from an assault by Sinaloa Cartel gunmen on the city of Culiacan, which forced the government to hand over the son of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán shortly after he was captured.
Authorities in Sonora state and the U.S. Embassy did not immediately respond to requests for comment. President Trump tweeted that “a wonderful family and friends from Utah got caught between two vicious drug cartels, who were shooting at each other, with the result being many great American people killed.” He offered to help Mexico strike back at the cartels, saying they “have become so large and powerful that sometimes you need an army to defeat an army!”
Mexico’s federal Department of Security and Citizens’ Protection said security forces were reinforced with National Guard, army and state police troops in the area following “the reports about disappearance and aggression against several people.” The troops were searching for the missing community members, believed to include 11 children or more. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador thanked Trump for the offer but said Mexico would act with “independence and sovereignty” in pursuing the criminals behind the attack.
Another relative, Julian LeBaron, said on his Facebook page the dead woman was Rhonita Maria LeBaron. Relatives of the dead posted video of a charred vehicle in which the victims had been traveling.
The first relative said a convoy of three vehicles had set out Monday from La Mora, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) south of Douglas, Arizona, but was attacked by cartel gunmen in a possible case of mistaken identity by gunmen. Many of the church’s members were born in Mexico and thus have dual citizenship. “This is how we live under the government of @lopezobrador,” tweeted Alex LeBaron, referring to the president. “Mexican Mormons, innocent women and children were ambushed in the Chihuahua sierra, shot and burned alive by the Cartels that rule in Mexico!”
While he said he found the first vehicle, the other two SUVs were missing along with their passengers. The attack occurred on Monday when the women were driving with their children in several vehicles from Bavispe, in Sonora state, to a Mormon community known as La Mora in neighboring Chihuahua state. Organized-crime groups in the area have been fighting and may have initially mistaken the vehicles for their rivals, according to news reports.
Jhon LeBaron, another relative, posted on his Facebook page that his aunt and another woman were dead, which could bring the death toll to at least seven. He also posted that six of his aunt’s children had been left abandoned but alive on a roadside. One vehicle, driven by Maria Ronita LeBaron, had a flat tire, and the others turned back to get help, according to the reports. The assailants attacked the first car, killing the driver and her four children — including two 6-month-old twins, according to the reports. They then set the vehicle on fire.
It would not be the first time that members of the break-away church had been attacked in northern Mexico, where their forebears settled — often in Chihuahua state — decades ago. When the rest of the group returned to the site in two vehicles, they were also ambushed, the reports said. Several other children escaped.
In 2009, Benjamin LeBaron, an anti-crime activist who was related to those killed in Monday’s attack, was murdered in 2009 in neighboring Chihuahua state. Jhon LeBaron, a relative, said in a Twitter post that the victims included the five people in the first car, as well as his aunt Dawna and her 3- and 11-year-old children, and another relative, Christina Langford Johnson.
Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Another member of the clan, Julian LeBaron, said he discovered Christina’s body and her infant when he reached her vehicle.
“I found Christina. She was outside her car, face down, assassinated, and I found her baby, who was still alive,” he told Ciro Gómez Leyva, host of a news show on Radio Formula.
“I don’t know if there’s a war here or what’s happening,” LeBaron said.
In besieged Mormon colony, Mitt Romney’s Mexican roots
The LeBarons describe themselves as Mormons but are part of a polygamous offshoot of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Last month, in a botched anti-drug raid, Sinaloa Cartel gunmen seized control of the city after soldiers attempted to arrest Ovidio Guzmán, son of notorious drug trafficker Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, on a U.S. extradition warrant. The government relinquished the younger Guzmán rather than risk what it feared would be a bloodbath.
“Hard to imagine that what happened in #Sonora today won’t impact [Mexico-U.S.] relations and security policy in [Mexico],” wrote Falko Ernst, Mexico analyst for the International Crisis Group, on Twitter. “Over the next days, I’d expect pressure within the U.S. to build on the Trump [administration] — by media and evangelicals, e.g. — and for that pressure to be passed onto López Obrador.”
The attack came just weeks after Sinaloa Cartel gunmen seized control of Culiacan to free the son of notorious drug trafficker Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, Ovidio Guzmán, who had been detained on a U.S. extradition warrant. The government relinquished the younger Guzmán rather than risk what it feared would be a bloodbath.
The LeBarons are descendants of Mormons who moved to Mexico in 1924, after disagreeing with the central church over polygamy. For decades, they lived quietly in farming communities, maintaining close ties with the United States and speaking both Spanish and English.
But their relative wealth made them targets of extortion and kidnapping when organized-crime groups began to assert themselves in northern Mexico. In 2009, a prominent member of the clan, Benjamin LeBaron, 31, was shot dead near his community in northern Mexico. He had publicly denounced the drug traffickers, who had earlier abducted his younger brother, demanding a $1 million ransom. (The family refused to pay). The killers left a message saying they were retaliating for LeBaron’s activism.
The latest attack coincided with a visit to Sonora by U.S. Ambassador Christopher Landau. “The security of our fellow [U.S.] citizens is our priority,” he tweeted. “I am following closely the situation in the mountains between Sonora and Chihuahua.”
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