Women gunned down near border recalled as good and kind

The three women who were gunned down with six of their children in northern Mexico by suspected drug cartel members are being remembered as good people who loved their families and enjoyed quiet lives centered around a successful pecan farming operation south of the U.S. border. Austin Cloes, a Utah relative of the victims, said Tuesday during an interview at his home in a Salt Lake City suburb that he saw all the victims at a family reunion in Mexico last summer, where they played basketball and spent time together.

The nine were killed in the northern Mexican state of Sonora, where they lived as members of a community that broke away long ago from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.