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image source, Social networks
Debanhi Escobar, the 18-year-old who was found dead in April in a motel cistern in Nuevo León, Mexico, died of suffocation.
It was announced this Monday at a press conference by the forensic team in charge of the autopsy.
The new report rules out other versions raised so far, such as a blow to the head (as the Mexican authorities had initially indicated) or that she drowned in the cistern (forensics completely eliminated this possibility).
“There are sufficient elements necessary to establish that the cause of death of Debanhi Susana Escobar was due to asphyxiation due to suffocation in its variety of obstruction in her respiratory orifices”explained Dr. Felipe Edmundo Takahashi Medina, director of the Institute of Forensic Sciences of the Superior Court of Justice of Mexico City.
In addition, he announced two other important conclusions.
One of them is that Debanhi died between three and five days before the discovery of his body on April 21.
The other is that no evidence, injuries, or any other finding indicating a sexual assault was found.
Contradictions and different versions
The case of Escobar, who was almost two weeks missingbecame one of the most recognized in the epidemic of violence against women and femicide in Mexico -and more specifically in Nuevo León- and attracted great attention from the population and the media.
The results presented this Monday contradict the conclusion of the first autopsy carried out by the Nuevo León Prosecutor’s Office, which determined that the young woman had died of a “deep skull contusion.”
The objective of exhuming the body was to carry out a new autopsy, the third, to compare the forensic opinions, one from the State Prosecutor’s Office and another independent one requested by Escobar’s relatives and who differed on the cause of the young woman’s death.
“To me, regardless of whether the federal government, the state government or the Prosecutor’s Office finds the truth, what we want is the truth“Said the young woman’s father, Mario Escobar, on July 1 when his daughter’s remains were exhumed.
image source, EPA
Mario Escobar and his wife, Dolores Bazaldua, trust that the authorities will end up clarifying the circumstances of their daughter’s death.
This Monday, the young woman’s father said that later or on Tuesday her family will issue a statement on the results presented.
The Mexican government promised to clarify the mysterious death of Escobar, whose body appeared on April 21 in a motel cistern in Nuevo León after having disappeared the night of April 8-9.
The death of the young woman caused an international stir due to the image that went viral of her abandoned on the road by a taxi driver who allegedly harassed her, and due to the alleged failures of the Nuevo León Prosecutor’s Office, which first investigated the case as an accident.
In mid-May, the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, met with the young woman’s parents and promised that there would be no impunity in the case.
Since the 1990s, the murders and disappearances of women in the country have increased, a trend that worsened in the midst of the so-called drug war.
It is estimated that every day 10 women are murdered in Mexico.
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