Eight people have been charged with federal crimes in connection with the March kidnapping of a group of migrants that began with a highway gunbattle and ended days later with FBI agents fatally shooting a suspect at a Houston hotel, officials announced Tuesday.
The abductions began as a human smuggling effort in a South Texas border city but morphed into a kidnapping during a shootout on a rural stretch of interstate west of Houston, federal officials said. Three migrants were wounded by gunfire and three others were taken captive, beaten and held for days for ransom, the officials said.
