A North Dakota Judge has ordered a Mexican drug cartel to pay $1.5 billion to the families of nine women and children who they are accused of killing.
In November 2019, the Juarez cartel allegedly attacked and killed family members from an offshoot Mormon community as retribution for publicly criticizing their activity.
Now, US Magistrate Judge Clare Hochhalter has ordered them to pay damages to the victim's family members, who filed a civil lawsuit against the cartel in 2020.
According to a report by The Bismark Tribune, the women and children were attacked near the U.S. border in Mexico on November 4, 2019.
After firing hundreds of rounds of ammunition into their vehicles, cartel members surrounded the victims and set fire to them in what court documents refer to as their "signature move".
There were no survivors of the attack, which claimed the lives of nine people: Maria Rhonita LeBaron and four of her children (ages 12, 10, and 8-month-old twins), Dawna Langford and her children (ages 11 and 2,) and Christina Langford.
In 2020, the families of the victims (including LeBaron’s husband, Howard Miller, and Christina Langford’s husband, Tyler Johnson) filed a lawsuit against the cartel under the Anti-Terrorism Act. The cartel was served notice of the pending trial through publication in Mexico newspapers, and a weeklong trial was held in February during which Judge Hochhalter heard harrowing testimonies from witnesses and experts.
Hochhalter's $1.5 billion award will be automatically tripled because it was brought under the federal Anti-Terrorism Act. This will bring the total the cartel is ordered to pay to $4.6 billion.
Per The Bismark Tribune, the cartel did not respond to summons or attend the trial in North Dakota. It is unclear whether the US government will be able to freeze their assets or force them to pay the damages.
David Langford said that the court had given his family a "measure of justice."
"The horror that my children experienced and my entire family has been through as the result of the Nov. 4, 2019, killing of [wife] Dawna Langford and my two children by the Juarez cartel will never, ever be made right," he said.
"We went into a United States courtroom in North Dakota seeking some acknowledgment of and measure of justice for the trauma inflicted on our family and we received it," the grieving husband and father added.
