American teenager fighting for his life after ambush in Mexico kills three

MEXICO CITY – An American teenager was fighting for his life after he was shot in the head in a nighttime ambush on a car in northern Mexico that killed his father and uncle, both U.S. citizens, and a Mexican relative, a spokesperson for the family said Wednesday.

The teenager, Jason Peña, of Chicago, was shot in the back of the head and remains in critical condition, the spokesperson for the family, Julie Contreras, a pastor and director of United Giving Hope, a Chicago-based advocacy group, said in a phone interview from Illinois.

When Jason was found by the police hours after the attack on Friday in the city of Durango, she said, he was outside the vehicle, but “his heart was still beating.”

“We have a fighter on our hands,” she said.

The teenager, who turned 14 on Monday, was being airlifted on Wednesday to Texas from Durango, about 600 miles south of El Paso, Texas. He was accompanied by his mother, a nurse who had flown in from the Chicago area, Contreras said.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy on Wednesday confirmed the deaths of two American citizens in the municipality of Santiago Papasquiaro, where the attack took place. It said in a statement that officials were “aware of reports of the injury of a minor” and that the embassy was assisting the victims’ families.

The Mexican authorities were investigating the attack, the spokesperson said.

A spokesperson for the Durango prosecutor’s office said the episode was under investigation but could offer no further information.

The killings come amid a number of recent attacks against Americans in Mexico.

Just weeks ago, a couple visiting from California were killed in the northern state of Michoacán, where drug gangs have battled to dominate the local economy and drug-trafficking routes. Security agents found the couple in a bullet-ridden car.

In May, the bodies of an American man and two Australian brothers were found in a water hole after they disappeared during a surfing and camping trip in the western state of Baja.

In March 2023, two Americans who had crossed the border in a group of four friends were abducted and killed by gunmen in the border town of Matamoros, in Tamaulipas state.

Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has vowed to tackle the violence racking the country.

“Rest assured that we are going to bring crime rates down,” she said last month.

The state of Durango, which borders Sinaloa, is under a Level 2 travel advisory from the U.S. State Department, which means that American travelers are urged to exercise increased caution in the area because of the threat of crime. Durango has recently seen a rise in violence believed to be connected to the Sinaloa cartel, including in the municipality of Santiago Papasquiaro.

The killings in Durango took place during a family trip over the holidays. Jason’s father, Vicente Peña Jr., who is divorced from Jason’s mother, according to the family spokesperson, had driven from Chicago to Durango to visit relatives in Mexico with his two sons, Jason and his 9-year-old brother. The younger boy was not named.

Four people – Jason; his father; his uncle, Antonio Fernández; and another relative, Jorge Eduardo Vargas Aguirre, a Mexican national – left the home where they were staying around 9 p.m. on Friday to buy food and drinks, Contreras said.

When they did not return, Jason’s younger brother, who had remained behind with his grandfather, became worried and texted Jason, she said, but received no reply. Their grandfather then called local officials.

Around 11 p.m. the authorities found the family’s vehicle, an SUV with Illinois plates, by a roadside with the three men’s bodies inside; all had been shot repeatedly, Contreras said. Peña had been shot in the face and was “unrecognizable,” she said. His brother, Fernández, had also been shot in the head, she said, and Vargas died of gunshot wounds to his body.

“They were ambushed; they were executed,” Contreras said. The family’s car was not taken, she said.

Contreras said she had been in communication with the U.S. State Department and that the Mexican authorities had not offered a motive. But she said that, according to local residents, people avoided driving on the highway after dark because it was under cartel control.

“You cannot be on the roads without permission,” Contreras said. “The road was not allowed to be journeyed on by the cartels after a curfew time.” The information could not be independently confirmed.

Jason was initially taken to a local clinic, and then to a public hospital in the city of Durango, Conteras said. But the hospital was not equipped to treat serious injuries like Jason’s, she said; half his head had been shattered.

The boys’ mother made arrangements for Jason to be flown to Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, Conteras said. (The mother asked not to be named while she was in Mexico, fearing the family could be targeted, according to Conteras.) The plane was scheduled to lift off late Wednesday afternoon.

“His mother is ready to bring him home – and by home, I mean American soil,” Conteras said, adding, “This has been an absolute nightmare for her.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.