MATAMOROS, Tamaulipas — Mexican authorities have arrested another person in connection with a kidnapping that left two people from South Carolina dead in March.
The Fiscalía General de Justicia del Estado de Tamaulipas (Attorney General of the State of Tamaulipas) said on Tuesday that an arrest had been made in connection to the March incident.
Jose Angel "H" is charged with aggravated kidnapping, according to a release from the attorney general. Six people were previously arrested in March around a week after the kidnapping.
Four people from South Carolina traveled to Mexico in March, leading to a violent shootout and abduction that was captured on video. Two of the people, Shaeed Woodard and Zindell Brown, died during the incident.
A relative of one of the victims told the Associated Press in March that four had traveled together from the Carolinas so one of them could get a tummy tuck from a doctor in the Mexican border city of Matamoros, where the kidnapping took place.
Shortly after entering Mexico, the four were caught amid fighting between rival cartel groups in the city. Video and photographs taken during and immediately after the abduction show the Americans’ white minivan sitting beside another vehicle, with at least one bullet hole in the driver's side window. A witness said the two vehicles had collided. Almost immediately, several men in tactical vests and toting assault rifles arrived in another vehicle to surround the scene.
The surviving Americans were back on U.S. soil after being sped to the border near Brownsville, the southernmost tip of Texas, in a convoy of ambulances and SUVs escorted by Mexican military Humvees and National Guard trucks with mounted .50-caliber machine guns.