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Members of a prominent Mormon family were full of anticipation about an upcoming wedding of a relative when they traveled in a caravan Monday in northern Mexico. In an instant, nine of them were brutally slaughtered — including twin babies who will never see their first birthday — in a flash of gunfire by drug cartel gunmen. Now, those who survived the attack are consumed by both grief as they plan funerals for their murdered family members and worry about the safety of others.
One woman and four of her children were burned alive when one of the vehicles exploded in flames when bullets hit the gas tank, and another child was gunned down while running away. A dozen children believed to have been kidnapped remained missing Tuesday after the attack, which relatives think was the result of a case of mistaken identity.
The nine members of the LeBarón family who were killed were dual U.S.-Mexican residents who divided their time between Utah and Rancho La Mora, a decades-old settlement founded as an offshoot of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is located about 70 miles south of Douglas, Arizona, between the borders of the Sonora and Chihuahua states.
“It’s devastating,” Leah Langford-Staddon, a relative of the ambushed family who grew up in the same Mormon community before she moved to Arizona, told the Arizona Republic. “It’s incomprehensible, the evil. I don’t understand how someone could do that.”
Langford-Staddon, whose brother discovered the smoldering, bullet-ridden automobile, said the victims included her nephew’s wife, 33-year-old Rhonita Miller, and her four children, ages 8, 10 and twin 8-month-old babies.
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Relatives have said those dead include 33-year-old Rhonita Miller and her children, 12-year-old Howard Miller, 10-year-old Krystal Miller, and the twins, Titus and Tiana Miller; 43-year-old Dawna Langford and her two children, 11-year-old Trevor Langford and 2-year-old Rogan Langford; and 29-year-old Christina Marie Langford Johnson.
Johnson’s 4-month-old baby was later found alive in one of the vehicles.
Frantic relatives in the United States took to social media to voice their outrage about the ambush, to ask for prayers for their families and to share stories of bravery by children who survived and protected others.
In North Dakota, Kenny LeBarón, a cousin of the women killed, waited in fear.
“We don’t know how many of the kids made it,” he wrote on Facebook. “They were ambushed.”
“When you know there are babies tied in a car seat that are burning because of some twisted evil that’s in this world,” LeBarón told The New York Times. “it’s just hard to cope with that.”
Kendra Lee Miller wrote on Facebook about how families across Sonora, Chihuahua and the Midwestern United States “waited in fear and horror” for news of possible survivors. Devin Langford, who saw his mother and brothers gunned down, hid his six other siblings in the bushes, covering them with branches to keep them safe while he went for help.
His uncles “armed themselves with guns and returned to try and find the hidden children, knowing many of them were injured,” Miller wrote. “They didn’t get far before realizing they would be risking death, since there had been continual shooting for hours, all over the mountains near LaMora. The group of men waited a while for reinforcements, and around 7:30, found the hidden children. They found Christina’s baby Faith with the vehicle around her riddled with bullet holes. Somehow she had remained untouched, and alive. She was in her car seat, which looked to have been hurriedly placed on the floor of the vehicle by her mother for protection.”
She said those who were “shot, burned and murdered in cold blood” were “innocent civilians, American citizens simply trying to live peaceful lives.”
Some of the children who were injured in the ambush were flown to Phoenix, Arizona, for medical treatment.
“What an unbelievable day of shock and tears,” Willie Jessup, who posted the video of the medical airlift, wrote.
The attack highlights the ominous danger posed by organized-crime groups that have controlled the area for years. Mormon sects in Mexico have battled for years with drug cartels, attracted not only by their wealth, but anti-crime activism.
“This is how we live under the government of @lopezobrader,” Alex LeBarón, one of the relatives of those killed in the attack wrote on Twitter, referring to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. “Mexican Mormons, innocent women and children were ambushed in the Chihuahua sierra, shot and burned alive by the Cartels that rule in Mexico!”
Langford-Staddon wrote on Facebook that Americans should not travel in Mexico because “the mafia over Sonora and the mafia over Chihuahua are in all-out war right now.”
“They are doing all they can in Mexico and we need America’s help,” she wrote, adding, “We need to get them all back home safe.”
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, including young children, and some missing.”
He went on to say that if Mexico needs “help in cleaning out these monsters, the United States stands ready, willing & able to get involved and do the job quickly and effectively. The great new President of Mexico has made this a big issue, but the cartels have become so large and powerful that you sometimes need an army to defeat an army!”
Claudia Pavlovich Arellano, the governor of Sonora, said on Twitter, that as a mother she felt “deep pain” for the victims and vowed that the “cowards” would not go unpunished.
“As a mother I feel rage, repudiation and deep pain for what cowards did in the mountains between Sonora and Chihuahua,” she wrote. “I don’t know what kind of monsters dare to hurt women and children. As Governor, I will do everything to make sure this does not go unpunished and those responsible pay.”