The Peruvian authorities had confirmed on October 7 that the skeletal remains discovered in the bed of the Colca River in Huambo, in the region of Arequipa, located in the south-east of Peru, belonged to the Belgian tourist Natacha of Crombrugghe. The body, found on September 21, had been identified thanks to a DNA test carried out on the parents of the victim.
The body of the young woman was repatriated to Belgium at the end of November by the federal prosecutor’s office on Friday and an autopsy had been carried out. Quickly, the thesis of the accident had been privileged. And it still is. But, twist this Tuesday, we learn via our colleagues from L’Avenir that the local police returned to the place where the body of the young Belgian was found. They want to make sure it was indeed an accident. “The Lima police returned to the canyon to carry out final analyzes in order to verify the thesis of the accident”, explained Natacha’s father to The future. “The Belgian police are awaiting their report and we will normally have a meeting with the Belgian prosecutor at the end of March to find out the conclusions”.
Natacha de Crombrugghe, a 28-year-old from Brussels, had been missing since January 24, 2022. The Belgian tourist was on a trek in Peru. That morning around 5 a.m., she had left a backpack in her hotel room in Cabanaconde, a small village perched more than 3,000 meters above sea level in the Peruvian Andes, before leaving alone to contemplate the canyon of Colca, one of the deepest in the world.