Four family members were shot in an attack in Mexico, killing three and leaving a teen fighting for his life.
The three victims were brothers Vicente Pena Jr., 38, and Antonio “Tony” Rodriguez, 44, both from Chicago, and their relative, Mexican resident Jorge Eduardo Vargas Aguirre, the Durango Attorney General’s Office said, according to WMAQ.
Vicente’s 14-year-old son was seriously injured in the attack and placed in a medically induced coma, the outlet reported.
The trio were in Mexico to visit relatives over the holidays.
“I feel very devastated because they wiped out my entire family,” Vicente Pena, the father of Vicente Pena Jr. and grandfather of the injured teen, told WMAQ.
The victims’ bodies were found on Dec. 27 along the Francisco Zarco Highway in Santiago Papasquiaro, Durango officials said.
The group had been travelling in an SUV with Illinois licence plates when they were attacked.
Local police said the victims were found next to the vehicle by the side of the highway with gunshot wounds to the head, according to WLS.
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The circumstances surrounding the shootings remain unclear but authorities noted that violent crime in Durango has surged.
Pena described the incident as a “massacre.”
“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,” Pena said in Spanish, according to a translator.
“I ask for justice,” Maria Elena Hernandez, the teen’s maternal grandmother said, translated from Spanish.
Family of the teen want him to be transferred to the U.S. to receive specialized medical care but doctors in Mexico say he is too fragile to travel.
Pena Jr. and Fernandez’s loved ones hope to have a proper burial in Chicago in about two weeks.