Teen survivor recalls horrifying details of ambush in Mexico that killed 9 originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
A 13-year-old boy hailed as a hero in the wake of last week’s deadly ambush in Mexico is speaking out for the first time about the horrors he witnessed that day.
Devin Langford said the last thing his mother said to him before she was fatally shot was “get down right now.”
“She was trying to pray to the lord, and she was trying to start the car up to get out of there,” Devin said in an interview Monday on “Good Morning America.”
His mother, Dawna Langford, and his younger brothers, Trevor, 11, and Rogan, 2, were among the nine women and children killed in the gruesome Nov. 4 attack.
“They just started hitting [the] car first, like with a bunch, a bunch of bullets. Just start shooting rapidly at us,” he said. “The car didn’t work. So she was just trying right there, starting the car as much as she could, but I’m pretty sure they shot something so the car wouldn’t even start.”
“Afterward, they got us out of the car, and they just got us on the floor and then they drove off,” he added.
Devin, who was unharmed in the attack, walked about 14 miles seeking help after hiding his injured siblings in the bushes and covering them with branches. He said the shooters had long guns and he feared for his life the entire time.
(MORE: American father speaks out for the 1st time since deadly Mexican ambush)
As he made the trek for help, he said he wondered “if there was anybody else out there trying to shoot me or following me” and he thought about “my mom and my two brothers that died.”
The family was ambushed by a heavily armed group while traveling from the town of Bavispe in Sonora state to Galeana in Chihuahua state between 9:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. local time, according to Mexican authorities. The family members were U.S. citizens but lived in a Mormon community, called La Mora, in the Mexican border state of Sonora.
The area where the attack took place — less than 100 miles from the Arizona border — is of territorial dispute by several cartels, and it’s possible the family’s convoy of cars was mistaken for one of them, authorities said.
