Mexican officials have arrested a man in connection with last year’s horrific massacre of three Mormon moms and six children on a rural road in the northern state of Sonora.
Identified only as “Alfredo L.,” the man was taken into custody in Ciudad Juárez, just across the Rio Grande river from El Paso, Texas, the Mexican attorney general’s office said.
“(He) is a member of a criminal organization with a presence in the north of the country, and is a likely participant in the events that occurred on Nov. 4, 2019, in Bavispe, Sonora, where nine people lost their lives,” the office said in a press release Wednesday, the one-year anniversary of the slayings.
The man is facing charges of homicide, attempted homicide and organized crime, officials said without elaborating on what led to the arrest.
The nine victims of the deadly ambush held dual U.S. and Mexican citizenship and were members of a fundamentalist Mormon colony called La Mora that’s not affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
David Langford lost his wife Dawna Ray Langford and two sons, aged 11 and 2, in the bloodshed.
He moved his second wife Margaret and the rest of their large family up to Arizona after a funeral at La Mora a week later.
“They’re scared for their lives,” Langford’s sister, Leah Langford-Staddon, told the Daily News last year. “They’re leaving everything behind. It’s an exodus.”
Dawna Ray, her sons and the other victims died when gunmen opened fire on their vehicles as they drove to another settlement known as Colonia LeBaron in neighboring Chihuahua.
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