A seven-year-old American girl was fatally shot by Mexican police after her family was allegedly mistaken for members of a drug cartel.
Aranza Aydelany Pardo was killed on October 29 while traveling with her family through Matamoros, Mexico, near the US-Mexico border, where authorities were conducting an anti-cartel operation.
Police opened fire on the family’s vehicle from a helicopter during the operation. Aranza was struck in the head and died.
The incident followed the arrest earlier that day of alleged Gulf Cartel member Alfredo Cárdenas Rodríguez. After his capture, cartel members reportedly established blockades across the region by burning vehicles and blocking roads.
The roadblocks forced the Pardo family to leave the highway. Mexican police reportedly followed them, believing they were cartel members attempting to escape.
Tamaulipas Attorney General Jesus Govea said the police helicopter was responding to ‘an attack from the roadblocks’ at the time, but Pardo’s family said they were caught in the crossfire.
The family said they stopped their vehicle and pleaded with the officers to recognize that they were civilians. Despite their appeals, they said the helicopter opened fire on the car.
Mexican authorities have opened an investigation into the shooting, although Govea said the officers who fired the shots have not been arrested.
A seven-year-old American girl was fatally shot by Mexican police in the border city of Matamoros after her family was allegedly mistaken for cartel members. Pictured: A stock image of Mexican authorities in Matamoros
Aranza Aydelany Pardo, 7, was killed on October 29 while traveling with her family through Matamoros, a border region where police were conducting an anti-cartel operation
Pardo’s family said that she and her five siblings were all American citizens born in the United States. Her mother said the family was traveling through Matamoros when police began pursuing them.
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She said cartel roadblocks forced the family off the highway and onto another route. A short time later, they realized a helicopter was following them.
Although her husband desperately pleaded with the helicopter pilot, Aranza’s mother said the officers apparently did not see the children inside the vehicle before gunfire erupted.
She told Fox San Antonio that she ordered her children to hide behind her seat as bullets struck the vehicle. Moments later, one of her daughters told her that Aranza had been hit.
‘Five seconds later she told me, ‘Mommy, they killed (Aranza). They shot her in the head.’ Then I grabbed my daughter, and she was already dead,’ she said.
The mother said she was also struck in the leg by the bullet that killed her daughter. She added that the police helicopter continued circling above the family as they sheltered in fear and pleaded for their lives.
Mexican prosecutors have reportedly confirmed that the bullet that killed Aranza came from a state police helicopter. They said the investigation had made ‘significant progress’.
The shooting took place in Matamoros, a Mexican city near the US-Mexico border
The violence reportedly followed the arrest of Alfredo Cardenas Rodriguez, an alleged senior member of the Gulf Cartel
The violence was reportedly triggered by the October 29 arrest of Alfredo Cardenas Rodriguez, an alleged high-ranking member of the Gulf Cartel.
Mexico’s Security Secretary Omar Garcia Harfuch shared a social media image of Rodriguez, known as ‘Axel’, in handcuffs after his arrest and hailed the capture of the alleged cartel figure.
Harfuch said Rodriguez was linked to kidnappings, homicides, extortion, and the trafficking of drugs, weapons and people into the United States.