CHICAGO (WLS) — Two relatives are dead and a 14-year-old boy is fighting for his life after they were shot while visiting family in Durango, Mexico over the holidays.
Chicagoan Vincente Peña Jr. was on vacation with his teenage son. He was shot and killed, along with his brother Antonio Fernandez, while his teenage son is in a coma in a Mexican hospital.
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“As you can only imagine this is a nightmare for his mother. And right now what we’re trying to do is provide that advocacy and security,” said Julian Contreras of United Giving Hope.
The local activist has been in touch with the U.S. State Department as the boy’s family tries to get him and their surviving relatives back home to Chicago. ABC7 spoke to grandmother Maria Elena Hernandez over the phone from Mexican. She said she was still in Chicago when she received a desperate call from her daughter.
“She said ‘Mom, they killed my boy. They killed Junior. They killed my brother-in-law. I don’t know what to do,'” she told ABC7 through a translator.
The circumstances surrounding the shooting remain unclear. Local police in the Mexican state of Durango said Hernandez, Peña, Peña’s son and a 22-year-old relative, who is a local resident, were found Friday night next to their vehicle by the side of the highway with gunshot wounds to the head. Only the boy survived.
“His little brother just learned of the whole situation,” Contreras said. “It is very heart-wrenching and currently this family is living a nightmare. We just want to bring them home so they can be safe.”
According to authorities, the family was traveling in a black GMC Yukon with Illinois plates at the time of the shooting, but at this point there is no public information to indicate whether this was a targeted attack or a robbery gone wrong.
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