When it is 20 days this Friday since the disappearance of the young Mexican Debanhi Escobar, whose body was found in the cistern of a motel in Nuevo León last week, the case still raises important questions that the Prosecutor's Office has not been able to answer.
Next, five doubts are raised that, if resolved, could help clarify the main question of the case: was it a murder, as the young woman's father has affirmed, or did Escobar accidentally fall into the motel pit, as the authorities suggest?
1. Who were the people you lived with in the El Diamante villa?
On the night of Friday, April 8, Debanhi Escobar, 18, went out with two friends to party, Ivonne and Saraí, whose last names have not been disclosed.
He met the first of them that same night, the second she had been seeing for four months.
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They were at at least four parties in which they did not stay long before they arrived at the El Diamante villa, in the municipality of Escobedo, around 1:30 am on April 9, according to Saraí in an interview with Televisa Monterrey. .
There they lived with several boys, some of whom were acquaintances of Escobar.
Saraí says that "some people" wanted to take Escobar from the party, "because they saw her taken", around 3:50 am.
But she and Ivonne objected.
The friends assure that they did not see these people again that night.
To date, authorities have not released any further information about who was at the party and if they may have had contact with Escobar afterward.
Frightened by their friend's "out of control" behavior, they decided to call a taxi to go home.2.
What happened in the taxi in which Escobar left alone with the driver, after the party in the fifth?
When the taxi driver, Juan David Cuellar, arrived for the young women, Escobar's two friends asked him to take her home alone, since she had asked them to "leave her alone."
They had met Cuellar that same night through the Didi application.
He had taken them to several of the parties they were at and left them at the fifth.
They asked for his phone number so that he could pick them up when the party was over.
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Cuellar told in an interview with TV Azteca that Escobar asked him to stop.
He thought he was asking her because he was going to throw up.
However, he says that when he stopped the car, Escobar got out and did not want to get back in.
It was then that he sent the photo to Saraí that later went viral, symbolizing Escobar's cause, in which she is seen alone in the middle of the so-called
highway of death,
with which she wanted to let her know that she had decided to address the service by own will
.
Debanhi Escobar Bazaldúa, 18, who disappeared on April 9 on a highway in Nuevo León, Mexico. Millennium
In an audio that he sent to Saraí to ask her to go look for her friend, he is heard saying that he fears that "they will accuse him of kidnapping if I try to upload it."
So she decides to leave her there.
However, Escobar's father accused Cuéllar of trying to touch his daughter's breasts on the same street as the fifth, where they stopped for a few minutes.
Cuéllar has denied these accusations and assures that he only tried to help her, "but the girl was not in her five senses (...) she did not string sentences, she did not have a concise talk."
At one point he told him that his parents should "know the truth", without specifying what he meant by that comment, something that was recorded on audio.
3. What did you do in a transport company and in a motel on the road where they left you?
The first place that Escobar went, according to the account of the Prosecutor's Office, based on the records of security cameras, was a transport company, named Alcosa.
Around 4:30 am, the company's security cameras capture her looking out of the surveillance post.
Then go inside.
Minutes later he is seen running towards the Nueva Castilla motel, a complex with several buildings.
The cistern of the Nueva Castilla motel, in Nuevo Léon, where Debanhi Escobar fell into one of the three graves, on April 9, 2022.Noticias Telemundo
The prosecution initially said that there were no videos of Escobar in that place, but later rectified it and showed cameras from the abandoned restaurant that captured her in the surroundings.
According to the videos shown by the Prosecutor's Office,
the young woman was walking around the Nueva Castilla Motel at a fast pace
and was seen peeking into the closed restaurant minutes before she died.
She then headed “to the tanker area” where her body was located, authorities said.
4. Was there anyone else with her at the motel?
Video from a surveillance camera inside the restaurant shows a car pulling up shortly after 5:47 am outside the motel.
It is also observed that a person gets into the vehicle.
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At 5:38 am the cameras capture the silhouette of two people standing in front of the restaurant.
Events that occur 40 minutes after the last video in which Escobar appears walking to where the cisterns are.
The Prosecutor's Office has said that it is aware of what the recording shows and that it is working to identify and locate the truck that appears and the person who gets into it.
However, prosecutor Griselda Núñez assured that Escobar remained in the motel facilities at all times.
5. How did it fall or how was it thrown into the cistern?
The Prosecutor's Office concluded, based on the results of the first autopsy, that Escobar died of a "deep contusion in the skull."
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What the authorities have not been able to clarify is what caused that blow to the head.
If it was the fall in the cistern or it happened before he fell there.
They have also not been able to establish if someone threw her into the cistern or if she fell by accident.
Some clues could shed light on what happened.
Escobar was alive when he fell into one of the three pits that make up the cistern and even managed to get up, authorities said.
There was no water in his lungs.
In fact, there was only 90 cm of water in the cistern.
The Prosecutor's Office found Escobar's phone in another of the pits of the cistern, different from where they found his body.
Although they said they hoped to be able to recover valuable information from the device, no new discoveries have been announced to date.
Finally, Escobar's family requested a second autopsy, the results of which have not yet been revealed.
"We did a separate autopsy, authorized, we'll see the results and comparisons," said the father on Thursday.