Nine members of Mormon family, dual U.S.-Mexican citizens, killed in attack in northern Mexico; Trump offers support

Assailants have killed at least nine members of a fundamentalist Mormon family in northern Mexico, authorities reported Tuesday, burning alive a woman and her children in a brutal assault that highlighted the growing danger posed by organized-crime groups around the country.

Alfonso Durazo, the minister of public security, told a news conference that three women and six children were killed. They were part of a community of U.S.-Mexican dual citizens.

The vicious attack stunned a nation still reeling from an assault by Sinaloa Cartel gunmen on the city of Culiacan last month, which forced the government to hand over the son of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán shortly after he was captured.

President Trump tweeted that “a wonderful family and friends from Utah got caught between two vicious drug cartels, who were shooting at each other, with the result being many great American people killed.” He offered to help Mexico strike back at the cartels, saying they “have become so large and powerful that sometimes you need an army to defeat an army!”

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador thanked Trump for the offer but said Mexico would act with “independence and sovereignty” in pursuing the criminals behind the attack.

Relatives of the dead posted video of a charred vehicle in which the victims had been traveling.

“This is how we live under the government of @lopezobrador,” Alex LeBaron tweeted. “Mexican Mormons, innocent women and children were ambushed in the Chihuahua sierra, shot and burned alive by the Cartels that rule in Mexico!”

The attack occurred on Monday when the women were driving with their children in several vehicles from Bavispe, in Sonora state, to a Mormon community known as La Mora in neighboring Chihuahua state. Organized-crime groups in the area have been fighting and may have initially mistaken the vehicles for their rivals, according to news reports.

One vehicle, driven by Maria Ronita LeBaron, had a flat tire, and the others turned back to get help, according to the reports. The assailants attacked the first car, killing the driver and her four children — including two 6-month-old twins, according to the reports. They then set the vehicle on fire.

When the rest of the group returned to the site in two vehicles, they were also ambushed, the reports said. Several other children escaped.

Jhon LeBaron, a relative, said in a Twitter post that the victims included the five people in the first car, as well as his aunt Dawna and her 3- and 11-year-old children, and another relative, Christina Langford Johnson.

Another member of the clan, Julian LeBaron, said he discovered Christina’s body and her infant when he reached her vehicle.

“I found Christina. She was outside her car, face down, assassinated, and I found her baby, who was still alive,” he told Ciro Gómez Leyva, host of a news show on Radio Formula.

“I don’t know if there’s a war here or what’s happening,” LeBaron said.

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The LeBarons describe themselves as Mormons but are part of a polygamous offshoot of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The attack came weeks after a botched anti-drug raid, in which Sinaloa Cartel gunmen seized control of the city of Culiacan after soldiers attempted to arrest the son of Guzmán on a U.S. extradition warrant. The government relinquished Ovidio Guzmán to avoid what it feared would be a bloodbath.

“Hard to imagine that what happened in #Sonora today won’t impact [Mexico-U. S.] relations and security policy in [Mexico],” wrote Falko Ernst, Mexico analyst for the International Crisis Group, on Twitter. “Over the next days, I’d expect pressure within the U.S. to build on the Trump [administration] — by media and evangelicals, e.g. — and for that pressure to be passed onto López Obrador.”

The LeBarons are descendants of Mormons who moved to Mexico in 1924, after disagreeing with the central church over polygamy. For decades, they lived quietly in farming communities, maintaining close ties with the United States and speaking both Spanish and English.

But their relative wealth made them targets of extortion and kidnapping when organized-crime groups began to assert themselves in northern Mexico. In 2009, a prominent member of the clan, Benjamin LeBaron, 31, was shot dead near his community in northern Mexico. He had publicly denounced the drug traffickers, who had earlier abducted his younger brother, demanding a $1 million ransom. (The family refused to pay). The killers left a message saying they were retaliating for LeBaron’s activism.

The latest attack coincided with a visit to Sonora by U.S. Ambassador Christopher Landau. “The security of our fellow [U.S.] citizens is our priority,” he tweeted. “I am following closely the situation in the mountains between Sonora and Chihuahua.”