MEXICO CITY, May 27 — Mexican authorities said Thursday they had ordered a new autopsy for a teenager whose death shocked the nation, after an independent forensic report concluded that she was raped and murdered.
The body of 18-year-old Debanhi Escobar will be exhumed for new studies to determine the cause of her death in the northern city of Monterrey, Deputy Security Minister Ricardo Mejia told reporters.
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.
A forensic report commissioned by the family concluded that Escobar suffered “a violent homicidal death,” and her body showed signs of sexual violence, according to Spanish newspaper El Pais, which obtained the document.
Previously, prosecutors said that the teenager died of a blow to the head and that they were not ruling anything out, including an accident or murder.
A photo taken on the night Escobar disappeared, showing 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 country where around 10 women are murdered every day. — AFP
