*A federal judge has ordered a Mexican drug cartel to pay $1.5 billion to the Mormon families of nine women and children who were slaughtered in the country in 2019.
The group was reportedly shot dead by members of the Juarez cartel in the barren hills of Mexico’s Sierra Madre Occidental. The killing allegedly prompted 100 members of their fundamentalist Mormon community to flee the country for the United States, The Guardian reports. According to ABC News, Cartel members fired hundreds of rounds of ammunition into vehicles and then set the victims on fire.
According to Complex, the victims “are decedents of a polygamist sect of fundamentalist Mormons who came from the U.S. to Mexico approximately a century ago,” the outlet writes.
Many of the victims died by burning, according to reports.
A Mexican drug cartel accused in the gruesome killings of nine women and children from an offshoot Mormon community must pay $1.5 billion to the families, a federal judge from North Dakota ruled. https://t.co/mWpTxWtfgD
— KFYR-TV (@KFYRTV) July 8, 2022
Here’s more from the report:
The cartel ambushed their three-vehicle caravan and called three women, 8-month-old twins, a 2-year-old, and three other children between 10 and 12. Ultimately, seven children survived the attacks, although five of them were shot and forced to trek through the desert to find help.
“If you start when the first bullet was shot until the last person in that car took their last breath, that must have been close to an hour, maybe, 45 minutes of just total terror,” said trauma surgeon and burn expert Dr. Sebastian Schubl. “Watching their siblings, their family members burn to death, it’s – it must be the most frightening thing that anyone has ever experienced.”
U.S. Magistrate Judge Clare Hochhalter has ordered the Mexican drug cartel that is allegedly linked to the killings to pay $1.5 billion to the families. It remains unclear how the money will be collected.
Per ABC News, the “award will be automatically tripled under federal Anti-Terrorism Act, increasing the amount to $4.6 billion.”
Federal authorities can freeze assets of terrorist organizations, but it is unclear whether the Treasury Department holds any cartel assets.
“We went into a United States courtroom in North Dakota seeking some acknowledgment of and measure of justice for the trauma inflicted on our family and we received it,” said David Langford, the husband of one of the victims.
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