SAN ANTONIO -- A San Antonio couple warns all Texans to be careful about driving into Mexico. They learned this lesson the hard way after driving a pickup truck across the border and nearly lost their lives.
A husband and wife, who requested to remain unidentified, simply wanted to visit their daughter and grandchild, but they only traveled about a mile into the country before they were carjacked and had their dogs stolen.
"There's no advanced warning," the husband said.
It’s a trip they have made many times before, at least for the last four years as a married couple.
“I was really scared to look at the guy with the gun,” the wife said.
This couple, too afraid to reveal their identity, said they got caught up in a very frequent crime in Mexico these days: carjacking. In this case, the thieves targeted large pick-up trucks coming from the U.S. into Nuevo Laredo.
”Dec. 23rd of 2010 is the worst day of my life,” the husband said.
The pair traveled to Monterrey to visit family. About a mile over the border at the busy intersection of Boulevard Luis Donaldo Colosi and Vincent Guerrero Avenue around dusk.
The couple waited at a red light when all of a sudden a sedan blocked them.
“Two doors on one side opened and all I could see was four or five guys with guns,” the husband said.
”I heard ‘get out of the car or I’ll kill you guys,'” the wife said.
The couple got out of their four-door pickup truck. Before the thieves pulled off, they directed the couple to remove their two dogs from the bed of the truck. However, they could not do so quickly enough.
”I just saw him drive off with my truck and my wife. She was screaming in the street.” the husband said.
”What will happen to my dogs? They are like my kids,” the wife said.
Eventually, a good Samaritan directed the couple to Mexican police. During the 45 minutes it took them to fill out the police report, two other people came into the station reporting similar incidents. U.S. officials told them they got caught in a complex operation that all starts with a scout.
"They take a cell phone picture of [the pick-up truck], send it to [the carjacker]. They knew what they were looking for and they were waiting to stop me. That’s how they operate,” the husband said.
They both realized there is a good chance they will never see their truck, passport and other sensitive documents or their two dogs again. So all they can do is warn the public about the dangers of traveling across the border and to speak out to Mexican officials to crack down on this problem.
”I think the Mexican government needs the United States' help,” the wife said.
The couple tells KENS 5 that the FBI, ICE, and police on both sides of the border will continue to investigate this case.
