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.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS