"My parents deserve the truth," says Debanhi Escobar in an audio recorded by the taxi driver who took her to the 'road of death'

Juan David Cuellar, the taxi driver who picked up Debanhi Escobar from a party and left her on a highway in Nueva León, where his trail was lost for 13 days, released this Wednesday an audio of a conversation between the young woman that the man recorded during that trip in the early morning of April 9, before she got off.

Cuellar was also the one who took the last photo of the young woman, when she got out of the car.

Escobar's body was found last week in an abandoned motel cistern on that highway, near where she was last seen.

The taxi driver has denied any responsibility in her death, as well as the family's accusations that the young woman got out of her vehicle because she had suffered sexual harassment.

Debanhi Escobar Bazaldúa, 18, who disappeared on April 9 on a highway in Nuevo León, Mexico. Millennium

In the recording, which is the last record of Escobar's voice known to date, the young woman says: "My parents deserve the truth."

The taxi driver asks: "What truth?".

And she repeats: "My parents deserve the truth," as heard in the audio revealed by the man in an interview for the Mexican channel Tv Azteca.

Local authorities reported that the woman died of a head injury, which they investigate as a femicide.

According to the taxi driver's account, he stopped the car because she told him to stop and he "thought he was going to vomit."

It was then that she got out and he took the photo of her where she was seen alone on the road.

"She gets off and that's where I take the pictures and tell her friends that she got off and even tell a co-worker," he added.

After waiting about three minutes, the driver decides to leave.

When asked by the journalist if he recorded the audio for a specific reason, the man denied it.

"It was simply a conversation with a colleague at night and telling him hey, I'm bringing this girl (...) he was telling me about the truth."

Debanhi Escobar: the murdered young woman is buried and new details about her death emerge

April 25, 202202:55

He added that he thinks she was mistaking him for someone else.

"I tried to help her, but the girl was not in her five senses (...) she did not string sentences, she did not have a concise conversation," said the man to defend himself against the family's accusations of harassment.

The conversation was copied from the cell phone with which he originally recorded it because his phone is in the possession of the Prosecutor's Office.

The authorities found the young woman's cell phone on Monday, "submerged in the water, elsewhere."

“It was not next to the body,” said Nuevo León deputy prosecutor Luis Enrique Orozco Suárez, who is now trying to recover data from the device, such as text messages, call logs and possibly videos or photographs.

The last time the young woman connected with her cell phone, in the early hours of April 9, was at kilometer 15.5 of the highway from Monterrey to Nuevo Laredo, exactly in front of the motel where she was found dead.

In another of the audios revealed to the cameras by the taxi driver, the man communicates the situation to one of Debanhi's friends, who assured that they knew him.

"

better tell her to get off but I just let you know so that they come for her because she was very aggressive," says Cuellar, according to her audios.

The man says in his voice notes that he doesn't want the girl's parents to think he "got her drunk or something," and expresses concern that they hadn't contacted him through the app.

"Even so, however you want, I wanted to take her but she didn't let herself," she says in another audio, in which she also reports to her friends, who said they responded with text messages, who asked Debanhi on the phone from the mother and she did not want to give it to him.

Debanhi Escobar: found cell phone could give clues about his disappearance and death

April 26, 202204:24

"I can't take her by force because they can accuse me of kidnapping her or something like that and you see how that topic is right now, well, I better get out of there," he says in the recording.

Cuellar recommended her friends to go for her because the young woman "was very ill."

He acknowledged that he knew that this road "was a dangerous area" and that after leaving it he went to look for a police patrol but "he did not see any", then he went home and told his wife about the situation and decided to return to where Debanhi Escobar was staying. it had remained but "was no more".

Escobar was caught on surveillance cameras at the motel, whose management initially denied that there were any videos of the girl the night she disappeared.

[New security videos provide clues to the last hours of Debanhi Escobar]

“A person with the characteristics of Debanhi can be seen having entered the building alone, having walked at different times, for several minutes inside, and in the last image available, he is seen walking along the side of a fence that is the one next to where the graves are located, ”explained the deputy prosecutor of Nuevo León, Luis Enrique Orozco Suárez.

His father has insisted that there is no evidence that his death was an accident: "There are no images that Debanhi fell there, there are no images that it was an accident," he told the Milenio newspaper.

Nuevo Leon authorities found Escobar's phone "submerged in the water, somewhere else."

"It wasn't next to the body, but it was submerged in water," said Orozco Suarez, who is now trying to recover data from the device, including text messages, call logs and possibly videos or photos.