Vance vows retribution after Marine veteran murdered in Mexico

Speaking to a rally crowd in Tucson Tuesday, where Quets had lived and worked until being gunned down in his pickup truck Friday evening, Vance said he had just spoken with the father and brother-in-law of the Marine. Vance is also a retired Marine.

“To the family of Nicholas … here is my solemn promise to you, while you’ve been ignored by your own government for the last four days, in the midst of this unbelievable tragedy, I promise you that calvary is coming,” Vance said to raucous applause. “And when Donald Trump is president, we’re going to kick the cartel’s asses, and we’re going to do it for you and for every person in this room.”

The Washington Examiner was first to speak with Quets’s father, retired Army Lt. Col. Warren Douglas, Quets and his brother-in-law, retired Air Force Capt. Phil Sweet, Tuesday afternoon, when they disclosed that they had not heard from any U.S. elected official in the four days since Quets’s death.

The 31-year-old Marine veteran was killed on Friday, Oct. 18 while driving with friends to the Mexican beach town of Puerto Peñasco, according to his family. Puerto Peñasco is roughly 50 miles southwest of the Arizona-Mexico border.

Quets worked for Pima County, home to Tucson, and had gotten off work around 2 p.m. local time when he went home and then drove southeast to Nogales, a town on the Arizona-Mexico border. He picked up friends to come along for the trip. He last spoke with his father Thursday evening.

Warren Douglas Quets, Jr., described his son as an “avid outdoorsman” who enjoyed a variety of ocean activities and was a “stand-up guy, doing the right things.”

Quets’s father received a call at 12:30 a.m. Saturday informing from the regional U.S. Consulate in Mexico, which informed him that his son had been killed while driving earlier in the evening.

Rather than taking a significantly longer route driving west through Arizona to the Lukeville border crossing into Mexico, Quets and his friends took a route that was shorter but entirely through a remote part of the Mexican state of Sonora.

Quets’s vehicle was ambushed by another vehicle, according to information shared by Quets’s family and a general statement by the officials in Sonora. The family members said that based on information shared thus far, a criminal organization known as a cartel is believed to be behind the attack.

“I have seen some pictures of my son’s truck. I haven’t seen any pictures of my son,” the father said.

Paramedics and police who arrived on scene were not able to revive Quets, who was fatally shot while seated in the driver’s seat. The truck’s glass window behind the driver’s seat was riddled with bullet holes. Police on scene recovered Quets’s cellphone and wallet. His father said his money was still in the wallet, untouched.

The friends who traveled with Quets were not harmed and were left behind on site by the vehicle that ambushed them.

Quets is a sixth-generation service member whose family has more than a century of time served in the military combined as active-duty and reserve time, as well as federal service.

“A U.S. military veteran transiting Mexico was executed and four days into this and no official, outside of the consulate in Mexico, has made any effort to contact us or provide us with an update of what’s happening,” said Quets. “What we want is an investigation and prosecution within the United States. We want the U.S. to take over the prosecution.

“If my case for my son is not worthy of the highest level of attention from the U.S. government then what is?” said Quets. “My end game for this is that this gets turned over to the U.S. and extradited, incarcerated here. There was more than one person on the site … and I need all those people coming back.

A statement from the district attorney’s office for the Mexican state of Sonora, where the shooting occurred, stated that it was searching for the individuals responsible for the attack.

The family expects to receive Quets’s remains Wednesday. 

The State Department confirmed Quets’s death in Mexico and extended deepest condolences to Quets’s loved ones and family.

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The Mexican government has taken over the local law enforcement investigation, but Warren Douglas Quets said it needs to be led by the United States.

“It has to go and be prosecuted through the U.S. attorney general. And I’m not going to stop until that’s occurred,” said Quets. “If we go down there and exert pressure, we can solve this very quickly. It’s just got to be made important enough.”