Video emerged today of the moment a seven-month-old girl was found alive inside a bullet-ridden SUV after her mother and eight relatives were massacred in Mexico.
Christina Langford Johnson hid Faith in the rear footwell of her Chevrolet Suburban when drug cartel gunmen attacked the Mormon family convoy on a track on Monday night.
Ms Langford Johnson, 31, got out of the vehicle with her hands up but was shot and killed.
In the video, Faith is found unharmed and strapped in her car seat more than eight hours later when relatives and the authorities arrived. She has been reunited with her father.
Ms Langford Johnson and two other mothers had been in separate vehicles with their children from their La Mora religious community, in Sonora state.
Rhonita Miller, 30, and four of her children — six-month-old twins Titus and Tiana, Krystal, 10, and Howard, 12 — were all killed. Dawna Langford, 43, and her sons Trevor, 11, and Rogan, three, also died. Eight children survived.
Mexican officials said the attackers could have mistaken large SUVs for those of a rival gang. The Juarez drug cartel is fighting a turf war against a faction of the Sinaloa cartel known as the “Salazar”.
Steven Langford, who was mayor of La Mora from 2015 to 2018, said community members often worked the US to bring up families in a place he described as “paradise”.
He added: “We’ve always known the dangers. We’ve seen the people doing their deal. We always had the policy, ‘We don’t bother them.’ We never dreamed something like this could happen. Now this place is going to become a ghost town. A lot of people are going to leave.”
The farming community was today holding the first funerals for the victims, with 1,000 mourners expected to attend. Mexican soldiers were guarding the entrance to La Mora.
