A Mexican teenager whose death triggered a public outcry over the nation’s femicide crisis died of asphyxiation, the partial results of a new autopsy showed on Monday, strengthening her family’s belief that she was murdered.
The body of 18-year-old Debanhi Escobar was exhumed on July 1 for new studies to determine the cause of her death.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has promised justice to the parents of the law student, whose body was found in April in a motel water tank, 12 days after she disappeared.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Her death “was due to asphyxiation by suffocation,” said Felipe Takeshi, head of the Institute of Forensic Sciences of the Superior Court of Justice in Mexico City.
The institute is taking part in the probe being conducted by a private investigator hired by Escobar’s family.
Takeshi said Escobar had been dead for three to five days when her body was found, and he ruled out sexual violence.
A previous forensic report commissioned by Escobar’s family concluded that the young woman had been raped and murdered, but “no evidence was found, no type of finding that could support sexual violence,” Takeshi said.
The new autopsy, which was agreed to by federal and state authorities and the family, seeks to “standardize forensic criteria on the cause of death” based on the first official autopsy — performed by the Nuevo Leon State Prosecutor’s Office — and the private expert report her family commissioned.
Prosecutors had previously said the teenager died of a blow to the head and that they were not ruling anything out, including an accident or murder.
After hearing the new findings, Debanhi Escobar’s father, Mario Escobar, said his daughter had clearly been murdered.
“My daughter did not die accidentally, that is my hypothesis,” he told reporters, adding that he is still awaiting the results of other analyses being carried out in England.
“Every process of femicide, because it is a femicide, is long, but I have peace that we are advancing,” he said.
A photograph taken on the night Debanhi Escobar disappeared, which showed her standing in the dark by the roadside after an altercation with a taxi driver, went viral.
She quickly became a symbol for an angry women’s rights movement in a nation where about 10 women are murdered every day.
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war in the latest such swap that saw the release of hundreds of captives and was brokered with the help of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), officials said on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that 189 Ukrainian prisoners, including military personnel, border guards and national guards — along with two civilians — were freed. He thanked the UAE for helping negotiate the exchange. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that 150 Russian troops were freed from captivity as part of the exchange in which each side released 150 people. The reason for the discrepancy in numbers
A shark attack off Egypt’s Red Sea coast killed a tourist and injured another, authorities said on Sunday, with an Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs source identifying both as Italian nationals. “Two foreigners were attacked by a shark in the northern Marsa Alam area, which led to the injury of one and the death of the other,” the Egyptian Ministry of Environment said in a statement. A source at the Italian foreign ministry said that the man killed was a 48-year-old resident of Rome. The injured man was 69 years old. They were both taken to hospital in Port Ghalib, about 50km north
The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland on Tuesday expressed concern about “the political crisis” in Georgia, two days after Mikheil Kavelashvili was formally inaugurated as president of the South Caucasus nation, cementing the ruling party’s grip in what the opposition calls a blow to the country’s EU aspirations and a victory for former imperial ruler Russia. “We strongly condemn last week’s violence against peaceful protesters, media and opposition leaders, and recall Georgian authorities’ responsibility to respect human rights and protect fundamental freedoms, including the freedom to assembly and media freedom,” the three ministers wrote in a joint statement. In reaction
BARRIER BLAME: An aviation expert questioned the location of a solid wall past the end of the runway, saying that it was ‘very bad luck for this particular airplane’ A team of US investigators, including representatives from Boeing, on Tuesday examined the site of a plane crash that killed 179 people in South Korea, while authorities were conducting safety inspections on all Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by the country’s airlines. All but two of the 181 people aboard the Boeing 737-800 operated by South Korean budget airline Jeju Air died in Sunday’s crash. Video showed the aircraft, without its landing gear deployed, crash-landed on its belly and overshoot a runaway at Muan International Airport before it slammed into a barrier and burst into flames. The plane was seen having engine trouble.
RSS