Mario Escobar and Dolores Bazaldúa, parents of Debanhi Escobar, speak with a group of volunteers during the search for the young woman. Julio César Aguilar
As the coffin of Debanhi Escobar heads this Saturday morning to the municipality of Galeana, in the rural area of Nuevo León, questions about his death grow for the family.
Two days after the discovery of her body, her father, Mario Escobar, has stated that they are sure that the young woman was murdered: “I will not rest until the murder of my daughter is clarified.
Whoever falls, bumps into whoever bumps into."
The actions of the State Prosecutor's Office, which affirms that Escobar died of a severe blow to the head, has been highly questioned by the family and other government agencies, such as the National Search Commission, which denounce irregularities in the investigation.
A large wanted poster with Debanhi's face, where the reward of 100,000 pesos is still offered for information that may lead to his whereabouts, guards the entrance to the Capillas del Carmen, in downtown Monterrey.
Inside the building, in a small room surrounded by crowns, is the coffin of the 18-year-old girl.
Friends, neighbors and relatives accompany Dolores Bazaldúa and Mario Escobar in their daughter's farewell.
After 13 days of searching, last Thursday at eight o'clock at night, the Nuevo León Prosecutor's Office found Escobar's body inside an abandoned cistern in the Nueva Castilla motel.
The site was one of the first places reviewed, according to state prosecutor Gustavo Adolfo Guerrero, since it was the last point where the young woman's cell phone was connected and where the last photograph of her was taken.
From there, the search parties headed by the parents and accompanied by drones and rescue dogs left for days.
Being so close for so many days has been too much for the family, who even doubt that the young woman was there from the beginning.
Mario Escobar and Dolores Bazaldúa participated in some of the searches of the motel that, according to the Secretary of Security, Aldo Fasci, had been registered up to four previous times without the agents finding any trace.
"It was a massive human failure," Fasci said of the police action.
The version of the Prosecutor's Office argues that it had not been possible to locate the body before, since it was at a great depth, about four meters, and the interior of the tank is not visible from the outside.
That is why, they say, it was the smell that alerted the workers at the Nueva Castilla motel.
“And the agents came immediately,” Guerrero said at an appearance Friday afternoon.
The public ministry, which has also received pressure from the mediatic governor, Samuel García,
He acknowledges that he does not know how Debanhi's body got to the cistern: "No line of investigation is ruled out."
The lack of information shared by the Prosecutor's Office, which took almost 24 hours after the discovery of the body to issue a statement, has outraged the family, who have not yet received the results of the autopsy.
A national organization, called the International Human Rights Commission —which has nothing to do with the IACHR, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights— is going to accompany Escobar's parents and has asked the control judge for a second autopsy.
However, the family is preparing to bury the young woman this Saturday.
In a simple and intimate mass, a few dozen people have begun Debanhi's farewell, which will end in Galeana, the hometown of Dolores Bazaldúa.
The priest of the Chapels has asked for eternal rest for Escobar;
Immediately afterwards, his father insisted: “It can't be that this is happening in Nuevo León.
We are fed up with them giving us our dead and murdered daughters”, and before the coffin of his daughter, he has finished: “I am not going to stop”.
The reconstruction of that night reveals that Escobar left his home in Apodaca around 10 p.m. to go to the fifth Diamante, in Escobedo, a few kilometers away.
The Prosecutor's Office notes that he arrived at the party at 01:20 in the morning.
Three hours later, Escobar was alone at kilometer 15.5 of the highway from Monterrey to Nuevo Laredo, between the Nueva Castilla motel and the Alcosa transport company.
At 4:30 a.m., according to the prosecutor, the young woman tried to communicate with company employees: "But she was not attended by anyone."
From there and until the discovery of her body two weeks later, everything is conjecture.
Despite having questioned 70 people and analyzed 120 videos, the Prosecutor's Office concludes that after that image: "There is no subsequent record of her whereabouts."
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