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Americas|American Teenager Fighting for His Life After Ambush in Mexico Kills 3
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/01/world/americas/americans-killed-durango-mexico.html
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Jason Peña, now 14, was shot in the head on a highway in the city of Durango, a family spokeswoman said. His father and uncle, both U.S. citizens, and a Mexican relative were also killed.
Jan. 1, 2025Updated 9:48 p.m. ET
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 spokeswoman for the family said on Wednesday.
The teenager, Jason Peña of Chicago, was shot in the back of the head and remains in critical condition, the spokeswoman 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 Dec. 27 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, which is about 600 miles south of El Paso, Texas. He was accompanied by his mother, a nurse who had flown in from the Chicago area, Ms. Contreras said.
A spokesman 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 spokesman said.
A spokesman for the Durango prosecutor’s office said the episode was under investigation but could offer no further information.
