Mexico City (AP) — The unforgettable story of a young woman left by the highway late at night in northern Mexico ended with the sadness of finding her rotting body in a motel’s groundwater tank.
Ricardo Messiah, assistant secretary general for public security, said on Friday that the woman’s body was clearly unrecognizable after being submerged in water for nearly two weeks, but was worn by Devanhi Escobar the night she disappeared. He said he was wearing a crucifix necklace and clothes.
The story ends in a common way in Mexico, even though authorities in the border state Nuevo Leon have stated that they are searching for her on a large scale. It was when her body was discovered by the locals.
“Hotel employees have issued a warning because of the stink from the area,” said Media.
State prosecutors later said they had confirmed that the body belonged to Escobar.
The Escobar case became a hot topic because of an unforgettable photo taken by the driver who was supposed to take her home that night. It wasn’t clear why she got out of the car, but her father, Mario Escobar, said surveillance camera footage suggests that the driver improperly touched her daughter, prosecutors said. I said I told him.
“I don’t think my daughter put up with harassment,” the father said. His full name was not disclosed, but the driver was asked. Mario Escobar said the driver may not have killed her, but he is responsible for the death of her daughter.
The driver, who worked for the taxi app, took a picture to show that 18-year-old Devanhi got out of the car alive on April 8 in the suburbs of Monterrey. There was a young woman standing alone by the highway at night, wearing a skirt and high-top sneakers.
This image seemed to show a tremendous vulnerability and the self-confidence, or despair, of a young woman.
No one saw her until the end of Thursday, when investigators were able to pull her body out of a 12-foot (4 meter) deep water tank near the roadside motel pool.
“The prosecutors didn’t do their job right,” Mario Escobar said.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Friday that the incident “logically caused a lot of worries, a lot of worries” among Mexicans.
Critics are worried by the fact that investigations are rarely very timely and efficient, even if authorities are urged to act by public protests.
During the week when investigators said 200 employees searched for Devanhi using drone, search dog, and security camera footage reviews, her body was actually not far from where she was last seen. I was lying where I wasn’t.
In Mexico, the number of female homicides has increased in recent years, increasing from 977 in 2020 to 1,015 in 2021. These are just cases classified as “femicide”, the legal term used when a woman is killed by gender in Mexico. Overall female murders are much higher.
Many women have disappeared, and it has been reported that about 1,600 people have been missing so far this year. Officials said 829 of them were still listed as missing and 16 were found dead.
Just before Debanhi Escobar disappeared, another woman was killed in Monterey. MariaFernanda Contreras, 27 years old. The suspect (apparently a female friend or acquaintance) was arrested.
During the week when authorities were searching for Escobar, local media reported that the bodies of five other women and girls were found in the state. All victims were reported missing at about the same time as Devanhi. The four were under the age of 16.
Later, Head of State Mary Valderas said the report was incorrect. She said all five young women were found alive.
Angelica Orozco, who heads a group of relatives in Nuevo Leon, United Forces for Our Disappeared, said the problem was not only slow for authorities to investigate and do it badly, but also tended to blame the victims.
“First, they don’t do careful investigations and investigations, and second, they’re statements issued by the authorities, which in some cases are related to illegal activity,” Orosco said.
She was particularly worried when Nuevo Leon prosecutor Gustavo Guerrero said Thursday that most women disappeared voluntarily or as an act of “rebellion.”
“The main reasons for women’s disappearance are lack of communication with their families, disputes with women, and youth rebellion,” Guerrero said. “Most of the disappeared women are between the ages of 14 and 25, but it’s not a crime, it’s a voluntary situation.”
That view was argued by Maria de la Rus Estrada, a group of activists at the National Femicide Observatory.
“It’s very serious and sad, but it’s a pattern of recent years, and disappearance is a femicide-like crime,” Estrada said of the Estrada case.
Also, the problem is not limited to Nuevo Leon. Authorities in another border state, Sonora, have so many disappeared women and men that state prosecutors “collect large amounts of DNA samples” from their missing relatives. Announced that it will send mobile labs to three cities to identify the bodies found there.