MEXICO CITY – Members of a criminal gang operating in the northeastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas killed a grandmother and four members of her family after interrogating them about a rival outfit, authorities said.The Tamaulipas Coordination Group, a federal-state task force, said the killings took place shortly after 9 p.m. Wednesday at the family’s home in La Soledad, a community on the Reynosa-Matamoros highway.
The dead were identified as Vicenta Garcia Sanchez, 65, son Fidel Martinez Garcia, 39, and grandsons Fidel, Alexis and Pedro Antonio, ages 19, 15 and 10, respectively.
Criminals dragged the family out of their home and questioned them about two suspected members of a rival gang, according to investigators. Unsatisfied with their responses, the assailants fatally shot the Garcias and sacked the house, taking a computer, cellphones and other items.
The attackers also took a car and a pickup truck, but abandoned them a few hundred meters (yards) down the road at a deserted residence, the Tamaulipas Coordination Group said.
State and federal police were joined by military personnel in the search for the killers.
Separately, the Coordination Group said that army troops removed 18 clandestine video cameras installed by a criminal organization in Reynosa, a city just across the border from McAllen, Texas.
State and federal forces dismantled a total of 136 illicit video surveillance devices in Reynosa between May 18 and July 8.
The apparent purpose of the cameras was to allow the criminals to monitor the movements of the security forces.
Tamaulipas has suffered from years of violence associated with a turf battle between the Gulf and Los Zetas drug cartels.
Mexico’s federal government launched in May 2014 a new strategy involving a larger deployment of federal security forces in Tamaulipas and a systematic purge of corrupt officers from state and local law enforcement agencies.
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