The four US citizens shot at and abducted in Mexico have been identified by family members as a group of friends from South Carolina.
Latavia "Tay" McGee, her cousin Shaeed Woodard, and two friends Zindell Brown and Eric James Williams had traveled to Mexico for a cosmetic medical procedure when they were abducted on Friday, March 3, according to relatives who spoke on Monday, March 6, to ABC News and the Associated Press.
Zindell Brown’s sister, Zalandria Brown, said on Monday: "This is like a bad dream you wish you could wake up from. To see a member of your family thrown in the back of a truck and dragged, it is just unbelievable."
She said her brother had two friends who had accompanied Latavia McGee to get tummy tuck surgery.
Latavia McGee’s mother, Barbara Burgess, 54, told ABC News she was concerned about her daughter’s trip to get cosmetic work done and warned her not to go.
However, she said her daughter told her, "Ma, I’ll be okay," before leaving on the journey Wednesday, she recalled.
McGee, 35, was scheduled to have the surgery on Friday.
She called her mother to say she was 15 minutes away from the doctor’s office, Burgess said.
That was the last time she heard from her daughter.
"Her phone just started going to voicemail," Burgess told the news station.
The group had crossed over the southern border from Texas into the notoriously dangerous city of Matamoros in Tamaulipas when their white minivan came under fire and they were grabbed by gunmen.
A shocking video of the purported abduction posted online shows men in bulletproof vests pushing a woman into the flatbed of a white pickup truck before carrying a man and throwing him into it.
Then they dragged two more men across the ground into the same flatbed.
The woman sat up in the back, while two of the men appeared to be unresponsive, according to the footage and a witness.
"The other two they dragged across the pavement, we don’t know if they were alive or dead," said the witness.
The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for the return of the victims and arrests of the gunmen.
Earlier Monday, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had said the four Americans came to Mexico to purchase medicine.
He also confirmed that one Mexican citizen was killed in the broad-daylight shooting.
Matamoros, the city where the Americans were kidnapped, has been plagued by fighting among factions of the Gulf drug cartel for several years
The State Department warns US citizens against traveling to Tamaulipas, but many Americans who live near the border often cross it to visit family and attend appointments in the area.
Watch a video of the kidnapping below.