Injured Chicago-area teen being flown to US after Mexico shooting that killed his father and uncle

Joe Mahr, Chicago Tribune on Jan 1, 2025

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CHICAGO — Five days after a Chicago-area teen was shot in the head in Mexico, the teen was being flown Wednesday to a U.S. hospital for treatment while his family continues to grieve the loss of his father and uncle who were killed in the shooting.

Jason Peña, 14, has been in a coma in a Mexican hospital following the Friday night incident, when he was shot along with his father, uncle and another man along a dangerous road near Santiago Papasquiaro in the Mexican state of Durango, according to an immigration advocate working with the family, Julie Contreras with United Giving Hope.

Contreras said the father, teen and his younger brother had traveled from the Chicago area to Mexico to visit relatives over the holidays. An uncle from Chicago, Antonio “Tony” Fernandez, 44, had later joined the family in Mexico. The teen’s father, Vicente Peña Jr., 37, and uncle had decided to drive to get more food and drinks, along with another man, Jorge Eduardo Vargas Aguirre, 22.

“Little Jason just jumped in the car with his dad,” Contreras said.

After the four hadn’t returned, a search party was sent and found their bodies, she said. All had been shot, including the teen, who was shot in the back of the head, with the bullet exiting the front. Only the teen survived.

The Peñas and Fernandez were U.S. citizens, Contreras said, with Jason an eighth-grader attending Prairie-Hills Junior High School in Markham. The U.S. State Department, when asked by the Tribune about the shooting, confirmed Wednesday that two U.S. citizens died and a minor was injured.

“The Mexican authorities are conducting an investigation at this time. We are closely monitoring the investigation by local authorities,” an agency spokesperson wrote in response to the questions.

The family does not know who shot the four, Contreras said. The State Department has listed Durango among a majority of states in Mexico with travel cautions, warning of violent crime and gang activity, with the western side of Durango, where the shooting occurred, considered so dangerous that U.S. government employees are prohibited from traveling there.

After the shooting, Jason Peña’s mother, Ana Cabral, flew to Mexico to be with her sons and began working to get Jason flown to Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston for better care and to better ensure his safety, Contreras said. The family is spending roughly $25,000, she said, for the two-hour medical flight from the Mexican public hospital in Durango to the Houston facility, while raising money to offset the costs on the crowdfunding website Spotfund.

“Our priority is to get him here (in the United States),” Contreras said Wednesday afternoon, before the flight, “which God is allowing us to accomplish today.”

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