EXCLUSIVE PHOTO: Cartel Gunmen Target Birthday Party, Kill Child in Mexican Border State Capital

Gunmen murdered six victims, including an elderly woman and a child, in two coordinated attacks in a war for the capital of a Mexican border state. To date, there are 16 cartel-related murders in 2022 in Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas. The violence comes at a time when the Cartel Del Noreste (CDN) faction of Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel fight for local turf.

In the recent attack, three gunmen from the CDN approached two homes in the Bertha del Avellano neighborhood and shot several victims, law enforcement sources revealed to Breitbart Texas.

The first attack took place outside a home where the gunmen targeted a young man. Soon after, the gunmen went to a second home, where they barged inside and began firing. The victims were all related and celebrating a birthday.

The victims included an elderly woman, her son, grandson, and three other victims including an 8-year-old child. The gunmen managed to escape. Hours after the attacks, Tamaulipas state authorities tracked down the shooters at a stash house and engaged them in a firefight.

Authorities managed to arrest the three gunmen and seized their rifles. The gunmen are identified as 32-year-old Jose Antonio Ibarra Patlán from Ciudad Mante; 18-year-old Karla Lizbeth Duarte Saavedra; and, an underage teen male.

According to state authorities, the gunmen are linked to other fatal attacks in the city, including one at a local animal feed store in November where they killed two men — and a December attack on a jogger who was mistaken for a state official.

Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to Mexico City and the states of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities.  The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by “Francisco Morales” from Tamaulipas.