Friend of 4 kidnapped Americans who alerted police says she was kept in the dark that the group was traveling to Mexico for a cosmetic surgery

• A friend of the four kidnapped Americans said she was kept in the dark about their Mexico plans.
• Cheryl Orange traveled with the group from South Carolina, but never crossed the border with them.

A friend of the four Americans shot at and kidnapped by gunmen in Northern Mexico in a deadly ambush said she agreed to join the group on their road trip for her pal's planned cosmetic surgery but was kept in the dark that they were headed to Mexico for it.

Cheryl Orange traveled with friends Latavia McGee, Eric Williams, Zindell Brown, and Shaeed Woodard in a rented white minivan from South Carolina to the southern edge of Texas last week.

Orange told CNN on Thursday that her best friend McGee "hit me up and asked me to join her, to accompany her in a trip to Brownsville, Texas, for cosmetic surgery."

The group departed last Thursday, and Orange told CNN that when they arrived in Texas, she learned McGee's surgery was scheduled to happen in Mexico.

"Once I got there I was then informed that her procedure was being done across the border," Orange told CNN.

Orange told authorities that she never crossed into Matamoros, Mexico, a town near the Rio Grande and the southern US border with Brownsville, Texas, with her friends last Friday morning because she left behind her identification, according to a police report obtained by Insider.

"I didn't have proper identification, so I couldn't join [McGee] to go across to the border," Orange told CNN, adding that she stayed behind at a Motel 6 in Brownsville.

That allowed Orange — who alerted the police on Saturday after her friends did not return — to ultimately avoid the terrifying abduction that left Woodard and Brown dead.

Orange told CNN she assumed that McGee did not know about any risks of traveling to Matamoros.

"She's not going to travel to danger," said Orange, who described McGee as "a beautiful person."