Two Arizona women were fatally shot on a dangerous stretch of highway in Mexico last week, prosecutors said.
The two women, ages 72 and 82, were discovered dead around 10:30 a.m. Friday in an overturned white Nissan Pathfinder riddled with bullet holes on the side of the Sonoyta-Caborca highway, near a Mexican border town, the Sonora attorney general’s office said.
The women were only identified by their first names, Enedina and Ubaldina, and had dual US-Mexican nationality, a security source told Reuters.
Prosecutors said the women were initially from Caborca.
During authorities’ search for the shooter or shooters, investigators found a navy blue Ford F-150 truck – reported stolen — that had a cache of magazines and cartridges, four AK-47 rifles and three ballistic vests, the prosecutor’s office said.
“Security forces from three levels of government immediately initiated an operation to locate and arrest the criminal group responsible, with the support of specialized air and ground forces,” Sonora state prosecutors said.
No arrests have been made.
The State Department told the Arizona Republic the two victims were US citizens and closely monitoring the situation.
“We extend our deepest condolences to the family and loved ones of the deceased,” the spokesperson said.
The highway where their bodies were found is near the town of Sonoyta in the state of Sonora, which has been plagued violence.
Last year, a California graduate student was shot to death in his SUV last year in the northwest state of Sonora.
The State Department has warned Americans to rethink traveling to Sonora because of crime and kidnapping.
With Post wires
