'I do not feel safe here:' American residents of La Mora, Mexico are weighing what to do after 9 women and children were killed in a cartel ambush.
Family and friends weep during the funeral service for Dawna Ray Langford, 43, and her sons Trevor, 11, and Rogan, 2, who were killed in an ambush earlier this week, in La Mora, Mexico, Thursday, Nov. 7, 2019. As Mexican soldiers stood guard, the three were laid to rest in a single grave at the first funeral for the victims of a drug cartel ambush that left nine American women and children dead.
While the sibling community of Colonia LeBaron has been peaceful since the 2009 murder of one of its members and subsequent installation of a security base, La Mora lacks such a presence — at least until Monday’s killings prompted state and federal forces to deploy to protect those who came to mourn. How long they stay could be crucial to its future.
On Friday, the bodies of Rhonita Miller and four of her children, all of whom also were murdered on the road between La Mora and Chihuahua state, were being taken back across that same dirt-and-rock mountainous pass in a convoy of pickups and SUVs for burial in Colonia LeBaron, which awoke under a persistent drizzle as locals made ready to head to the cemetery.
La Mora and Colonia LeBaron are intertwined by decades of marriages and births, and share a sense of community as English-speaking, dual-citizen Mormons living in Mexico, even if there’s variety from family to family on actual religious views and practices. An offshoot of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, they are not affiliated with the mainstream church.
Mexican officials said the attackers may have mistaken the group’s large SUVs for those of a rival gang, but community members dispute that and say they have proof the attackers knew they were targeting women and children.
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