Listen To Story Above

A tragic incident in Mexico has claimed three lives, including two Chicago residents, following a violent attack on Friday.

According to the Durango Attorney General’s Office, the victims were identified as Americans Vicente Peña Rodríguez and Antonio Fernández Rodríguez, along with Jorge Eduardo Vargas Aguirre, a resident of Durango, Mexico.

The attack also left Vicente Peña Rodríguez’s teenage son critically wounded. The young boy, who was celebrating his 14th birthday during the trip, has been placed in a medically induced coma. While family members are eager to transfer him to American medical facilities, Mexican healthcare providers insist he’s too unstable to move.

“I feel very devastated because they wiped out my entire family,” said Vicente Peña, the father of Vicente Peña Rodríguez and grandfather of the injured teen.

“It was a massacre … because my son was shot four times in the head and once in the shoulder, and the other boy was also shot four times, once in the shoulder, and the other boy who was with them was also shot three times,” Peña said.

The attack occurred near Las Palmas, where assailants targeted the group traveling in an SUV bearing Illinois license plates. The exact circumstances surrounding the shooting remain unclear.

The devastating news reached Chicago when the teenage victim’s grandmother, Maria Elena Hernandez, received a distressing call from her daughter. “She said ‘Mom, they killed my boy. They killed Junior. They killed my brother-in-law. I don’t know what to do,'” Hernandez said.

Julia Contreras from United Giving Hope, an organization working to facilitate the teen’s return to the U.S., described the family’s ordeal. “As you can only imagine this is a nightmare for his mother. And right now what we’re trying to do is provide that advocacy and security,” she said.

“His little brother just learned of the whole situation,” Contreras said. “It is very heart-wrenching and currently this family is living a nightmare. We just want to bring them home so they can be safe.”

“We are coordinating everything, but it’s a challenge in the hospitals in Mexico. They have their train of thought, and they have their protocols and procedures, and they don’t care if you’re a United States citizen. So it’s nightmarish to be in another country, like Mexico, and not have the adequate, appropriate medical care,” Contreras said.