Real life “Taken” scenario see grieving mother turn vigilante
On Sunday morning on March 27, 2016, Miriam Rodriguez was hiding and holding a loaded .38 pistol near the Matamoros International Bridge, which links Matamoros, Mexico, and Brownsville, Texas.
Wearing a baseball cap and trench coat, the 56-year-old mother-of-three was waiting for a member of the feared Zeta drug cartel known only as “The Florist. “
Two years prior, he had been one of 11 men involved in the kidnapping of her then 20-year-old daughter Karen. Now, Miriam was out for justice — and revenge.
Spotting the Florist near some street vendors, Miriam pulled her gun and seized the moment. She grabbed his shirt and jammed the pistol into his back.
“’If you move, I’ll f–king shoot you,’ she said, going on to hold him at gunpoint and perform a citizen’s arrest until police arrived.
Author Azam Ahmed portrays this dramatic scene in the his new book “Fear Is Just A Word – A Missing Daughter, a Violent Cartel, and a Mother’s Quest for Vengeance” (Random House). It tells the story of how, for years, Miriam relentlessly pursued the men who had taken her daughter.
It’s also the tale of how drugs, violence and lawlessness can all but take over a country, leaving its citizens to take the law into their own hands, just as Miriam did.
“Criminals thrived on the permissiveness that fear allowed; she was a one-woman example of how things might be different,” writes Ahmed. “Miriam had said that fear was just a word. To the Zetas, it was much more than that.”
Miriam first learned of her daughter’s kidnapping when she was living and working as a housekeeper for a pair of doctors in McAllen, Texas, after she split up with husband, Luis, and moved north.
Read more at
https://nypost.com/2023/10/21/mom-fights-back-against-drug-cartel-who-kidnapped-daughter/
Mixed Media Magazine 