Mexico kidnapping survivors LaTavia Washington McGee, Eric Williams break silence

The Americans who survived a violent abduction at gunpoint by a Mexican drug cartel thought help would never come after their two friends were killed and the group was abandoned at a dingy wooden shack.

Over a month after the horrifying, broad-daylight attack, LaTavia Washington McGee and Eric Williams spoke with CNN about losing their friends, Shaeed Woodard and Zindell Brown, following the traumatizing March 3 kidnapping in the crime-ridden border city of Matamoros.

“They didn’t deserve that. None of us deserved it. But we’re alive — we have a lot of recovering to do,” Washington McGee said.

The Americans were driven around an entire night listening to the sound of guns being cocked before they were abandoned at a wooden shack.

“They had police scanners and all types of stuff in their trucks. They knew what was going on,” McGee recalled. “They were always a step ahead. So I was like, they’re never going to find us like this.”

The survivors and their friends’ bodies were found on March 7 and brought back to the US.

The group of friends had been driving four days earlier when they heard a car horn behind them and soon after, gunfire erupted.

“Zindell and Shaeed, they jumped up to run and they were gunned down,” Williams recalled, adding that he jumped out of the driver’s side after someone started to beat down the car with a gun.

“That’s when I was shot on both legs,” Williams said. He was later taken to a clinic where he was stitched up without medication or anyone checking if the bullet was inside his leg.

Both Zindell and Shaeed were still alive when the group was forced into the bed of a pickup truck, which took them to another location following the encounter to be questioned.

“That’s where Shaeed said, ‘I love y’all, and I’m gone.’ And he died right there,” Williams said tearfully. “He said he loved us and he was gone. It was the last thing he did.”

Washington McGee remembered telling Woodard she was sorry moments before he died.

She was later put in a room with Brown, who was badly wounded before he died.

“He was fighting for his life and they didn’t do nothing,” she said. “I talked to him the whole time … I just told him sorry because I asked him to come with me.”

Relatives had said that the group traveled to Mexico so McGee could undergo a tummy tuck operation.

“He was like, ‘It’s OK. I’m your brother. I’m supposed to be there for you. I love you,’” Washington McGee recalled, adding that their kidnappers had said they would take Brown to the hospital, but by the time they returned, he had died.

An apology letter was eventually issued by the Gulf Cartel, the group believed to be behind the incident.

Five of its members have been handed over to authorities, though officials doubt the sincerity of the apology.

At least six people in Mexico have been arrested in connection to the fatal kidnapping.