MCALLEN, Texas — A four-year-old boy from the Texas border town of Roma has been returned to his family following his kidnapping by cartel gunmen in Mexico.
The boy is an American citizen. He was in a park in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Mier with his grandfather and the two made their way to a nearby convenience store, a law enforcement official said to Breitbart Texas on the condition of anonymity. The official confirmed the information the family had released.
A group of heavily armed men arrived at the store and beat up the grandfather while kidnapping the boy and a young woman who was also at the store.
The boy was released a day later and has since been reunited with his family as authorities continue to look into the matter. Preliminary information points to the kidnapping being a case of mistaken identity or a quick attempt at using the boy as leverage to collect a ransom.
As Breitbart Texas previously reported, last year Mexico had 199 reported kidnappings of American citizens. The cases highlight the often overlooked dangers of traveling to Mexico. In spite of the best efforts of the Mexican government and American chambers of commerce to downplay the worsening security condition in Mexico, Breitbart Texas recently went to the Mexican border city of Reynosa where federal and state authorities are conducting a series of searches at empty homes, vacant lots and open fields searching for mass graves in hopes of providing an answer to the more than 800 families that have reported a kidnapped loved one just in Reynosa alone.
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