Debanhi Escobar, the Mexican teenager whose decomposed body was found in a water tank at a motel last week, was seen entering the hotel by herself, authorities have said.
The 18-year-old walked into the Nueva Castilla motel at Escobedo in Mexico on the morning of 9 April, officials revealed on Sunday.
Samuel Garcia, governor of the northeast state of Nuevo Leon, said: “The prosecutor and his team showed us a series of evidence, especially some videos, in which we see that Debanhi entered the property alone and that she spent a few minutes in the property.”
The police shared the footage with Governor Garcia as well as Escobar’s distraught parents.
Nuevo Leon state attorney Gustavo Guerrero had earlier said that the cause of death was a contusion to the skull.
The motel where Escobar’s body was found was not very far from where she was last captured in a viral photo two weeks earlier. Authorities said the body was unrecognisable and that they were only able to identify her from the crucifix necklace she wore around her neck and the clothing that she had been described to be wearing on the night she went missing.
The teenager had last been seen on the night of 8 April in Nuevo Leon, when she took a taxi home after partying with her friends.
The haunting and blurred photo showed a masked Escobar standing alone on one side of the highway wearing high-top sneakers and a skirt. It was captured by her taxi driver, who says he snapped the photo to show that the young woman did indeed get out of his car alive.
The 47-year-old driver had allegedly asked the young woman to leave his car after the pair got into an arugment when she refused his advances, according to her father Mario Escobar.
Her family had earlier blamed the police for their lukewarm approach to the search. They had alleged that even though officials scanned the motel several times, they couldn’t find any leads.
The motel staff had alerted the police after they noticed a foul smell wafting from the underground water tank. It was only then that investigators found Escobar’s body.
“It is difficult for me, for my wife, but somehow we are calm that we were able to find her, bury her, we know where to put a flower, where to mourn her, but many people do not have that,” the teenager’s father Mario Escobar said, according to The Sun.
He had said earlier that his daughter was “beaten and strangled”, and according to prosecutors “the driver inappropriately touched his daughter”.
So far, no arrests have been made in the case. The driver was questioned in connection with the case but authorities have ruled him out.
Meanwhile, on Sunday, hundreds of women took out a protest march through downtown Mexico City and its suburbs to protest the death of Escobar.
Local reports said that the protestors marched in the suburb of Nezahualcoyotl, where two other women were killed in the last week. The women carried signs reading “no to harassment”, “Mexico is a mass grave” and “24,000 are missing” as they agitated against the rising disappearances of women in the country, and the lack of action to prevent it.
A total of 1,015 women were reported missing in Mexico in 2021, up from 977 recorded a year earlier. And overall, 100,000 people from all genders are logged as missing in Mexico.
