CIUDAD VICTORIA, Mexico—A road trip to Mexico for cosmetic surgery veered violently off course when four Americans were caught in a drug cartel shootout, leaving two dead and two held captive for days in a remote region of the Gulf coast before they were rescued from a wood shack, officials said Tuesday.
Their minivan crashed and was fired on shortly after they crossed into the border city of Matamoros on Friday as drug cartel factions tore through the streets, the region’s governor said. A stray bullet also killed a Mexican woman about a block and a half away.
The four Americans were hauled off in a pickup truck, and Mexican authorities frantically searched as the cartel moved them around—even taking them to a medical clinic—“to create confusion and avoid efforts to rescue them,” Tamaulipas Gov. Américo Villarreal said….