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A 7-year-old American-born girl was killed when Mexican police opened fire from a helicopter during a cartel chase to capture a Gulf Cartel leader.
The little girl, Aranza, was hit in the head by gunfire and died on Oct. 29, prompting an investigation into the police-involved shooting, CBS News reported, the Tamaulipas state prosecutor’s office.
Aranza’s family was traveling in an area where armed men had set up blockades, following the capture of a local gangbanger in Matamoros, when the shooting unfolded.
Aranza’s mother told Mexican media she was driving with her husband and five children when they noticed a police helicopter following them in the Mexican city which sits on the border of Brownsville, Texas.
After stopping the vehicle, the woman’s husband got out to tell authorities they were civilians with children, but police opened fire anyway.
Mexican network Milenio reported all the children were under the age of 14, and Aranza’s mother used her body to protect them; however, a bullet struck Aranza in the head.
Tamaulipas Attorney General Jesús Govea told Milenio that law enforcement officers were responding to an attack from the ground when they came under fire during road blockades.
Govea reported that the police officers who opened fire were not detained, but there is “significant progress” in the investigation.
According to KABB-TV, the local criminal Alfredo Cárdenas Rodríguez, known as Axel, who is described as a suspected high-ranking member of the Ciclones group within the Gulf Cartel.
Following his capture, Mexico’s Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch shared a post to X that Cárdenas Rodríguez has been linked to homicides, kidnappings, extortion and trafficking drugs, weapons and people into the United States.
