Mexico town buries 3 of 9 Americans slain
LA MORA, Mexico — With Mexican soldiers standing guard, a mother and two sons were carried to the grave in hand-hewn pine coffins Thursday at the first funeral for the victims of a drug-cartel ambush that left nine American women and children dead.
Clad in shirtsleeves, suits or modest dresses, hundreds of mourners embraced in grief under white tents erected in La Mora, a hamlet of about 300 people who consider themselves Mormon but are not affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Members of the extended community — many of whom, like the victims, are dual U.S-Mexican citizens — had built the coffins themselves, and used shovels to dig a single, large grave for the three in the rocky soil of La Mora’s small cemetery. Farmers and teenage boys carried the coffins.
The hamlet is about 70 miles south of the Arizona border, where American-style frame houses alternate with barns and orchards.
Patrols of Mexican army troops passed by regularly on the hamlet’s only paved road, providing security that was lacking the day of the killings.
Dawna Ray Langford, 43, and her sons Trevor, 11, and Rogan, 2, were to be laid to rest together, just as they died together Monday when attackers fired a hail of bullets at their SUV on a dirt road leading to another settlement, Colonia LeBaron, in neighboring Chihuahua state.
The other victims are expected to be buried in Colonia LeBaron later. But the two communities, whose residents are related, drew together in a show of grief.
Dozens of high-riding pickups and SUVS, many with U.S. license plates from as far away as North Dakota, arrived in La Mora for the funeral, traveling over the dirt road where the attack occurred.
At least 1,000 visitors bunked down in the hamlet overnight ahead of the funeral, filling floor space in the 30 or so homes or sleeping in tents they brought with them. At least one cow was slaughtered to help feed the masses as well as the few dozen soldiers guarding the entrance.
Gunmen from the Juarez drug cartel had apparently set up the ambush as part of a turf war with the Sinaloa cartel, and the U.S. families drove into it.
Steven Langford, who was mayor of La Mora from 2015 to 2018, said he expects the killings to have a major effect on the community.
At one time, he didn’t think twice about moving around the area in the middle of night, but in the past 10 to 15 years, things “got worse and worse and worse.” As many as half of the residents could end up moving away, he said.