On December 27, Jason Peña was enjoying his Christmas vacation in Mexico with his father and uncle. This family from Chicago had traveled by car from Illinois to Durango, where the grandfather lives, to celebrate the teenager’s birthday, who would have turned 14 on December 29. However, the bodies of three family members were found in Las Palmas, in the municipality of Santiago Papasquiaro. Jason Peña was there, with a gunshot wound to the head. The young man has been transferred to a hospital in Texas, in the United States, amid a wave of criticism of security for tourists in Mexico.
The Durango Prosecutor’s Office has reported that the minor is “in poor health.” There are still no details about the motive for the attack. Martín Saúl Ceniceros Cerda, head of communications, has detailed by phone call that no investigative theory is ruled out, “but it was probably a robbery.” All the details are being integrated into the investigation file and he is working with the United States authorities to clarify the case.
The Peña family had traveled more than 3,000 kilometers by road so that Jason could celebrate his birthday with his grandfather in Durango. On the night of December 27, they left in a black van with U.S. license plates and did not return. Authorities estimate that around 10:00 p.m. they were assaulted and shot. Jason’s father, Vicente, along with his uncle Eduardo and another relative named Antonio, died at the scene. Jason was seriously injured with a gunshot to the head.
Julie Contreras, a Chicago lawyer and spokesperson for the family, has called on the community to ask for prayers for the health of the minor. “He is fighting for his life, we have to get him home,” she stressed in a video on her social networks. Contreras has stressed the difficulty of repatriating the injured man from Mexico and has asked the United States authorities for an ambulance plane so that he can receive “appropriate” hospital treatment. “He is a fighter, he is a champion. He suffered a bullet in the head and is still breathing, but he needs appropriate treatment to survive,” the lawyer said. “His father is dead, his uncle is dead. It could be Jason today and tomorrow it could be any one of us,” she said. The teenager has already been transferred to a hospital in Texas for recovery.
The massacre has once again raised a wave of criticism of Mexico’s security for travelers. The United States maintains a precautionary travel alert level for Durango due to the presence of groups related to crime and violent crimes. However, it prohibits government workers from traveling west of Highway 45. That area, where the murder of the Peña family occurred, is a restricted zone.
This latest crime adds to a list of murders of American citizens in Mexican territory. On June 21, Gabriel Trujillo, an American botanist who was a doctoral student at the University of Berkeley, was murdered in Sonora. In May, the triple homicide in Baja California of the Australian brothers Callum and Jake Robinson and the American Jack Carter Road once again set off alarm bells for foreign travelers. Then, the attack in 2023 on four friends who traveled to Tamaulipas from the United States was still present. That case again strained diplomatic relations with the northern neighbor, since two of its citizens were gunned down in an incident linked to a mix-up by the Gulf Cartel.
Source: elpais
