American Missionary Killed in Mexico

[Dr. Shane]

American Missionary Killed in Mexico

Quote:

Nancy Davis Told Friends She 'Might Not Come Back Alive' From Mexico

Nancy Davis, the American missionary killed in Mexico by what police suspect were drug thugs, told friends when she last saw them over dinner this fall that she "might not come back alive" from her next visit to Mexico.

Nancy and her husband Sam Davis, both Christian missionaries, were aware of the escalating drug violence in Mexico and had been chased by gunmen on previous occasions. But they kept going back...

Nancy and Sam Davis were riding along a highway 70 miles south of the border town of Reynosa, Mexico, on Wednesday when they approached an illegal roadblock. Rather than stop, they continued driving and were chased by several gunmen in a black pick-up truck, according Pharr Police Chief Ruben Villescas.

Rather than stop, Sam Davis gunned the engine of their blue 2008 Chevrolet pick-up, a vehicle popular with the dangerous Zetas drug cartel that controls the area. The pursuing gunmen fired at Davis' truck, and a bullet hit Nancy Davis in the head.

Her husband raced the 70 miles to the Pharr International Bridge, speeding the last part of the way against on-coming traffic to avoid the long lines of northbound cars at the border checkpoint, arriving at 12:25 p.m., according to police reports.

Nancy Davis was rushed to a hospital in the border city of McAllen, Texas, but she was declared dead at 1:54 p.m.

This is where I live. We use to do missionary work in Reynosa until I got robbed twice by the police. Then we switched to a small Mexican village dependent on tourism that is quite safe. My wife and I have used the same bridge he came across scores of times.

This couple did everything wrong.

1. They were driving on a highway that the US State Department has advised Americans to avoid using. They could have come back to Texas on a bus and it would have been unlikely that they would have had any problems.

2. They were driving a new model pick-up truck which is what the cartels target. The story doesn't say if it had Texas or Mexican plates on it but if it had Texas plates, that is another wrong thing to do.

3. They drove all the way to the US to get medical treatment. She had a bullet wound to the head! Go to the nearest hospital people! They passed many Mexican hospitals before getting to the border.

As a rule, the cartels do not target innocent Americans unless those Americans have something they want - like a new model pick-up. The cartels realize that Americans in Mexico bring money to the local economy. Americans tend not to be targets unless they are involved with the cartels themselves.

We confine our missionary work to a small village just across the border. We were invited to go to a campmeeting further south earlier this year and decline because of the violence - even though we would have been traveling in bus.

[John317]

Thanks for that, Shane. It's a tragedy any way you look at it, but like you, I wonder why they chose to do so many things they shouldn't have and didn't need to do.