The Prosecutor's Office of the Mexican state of Nuevo León has seized five vehicles that were in the motel where Debanhi Escobar's body was found, and has interviewed its occupants as part of the investigations to clarify what happened in the last hours of the young woman's life. of 18 years.
Griselda Núñez, a prosecutor specializing in femicides, told the press on Monday that the cameras at the Nueva Castilla motel show that these vehicles were there on Saturday, April 9, at dawn.
"They have been insured, they have been under review, and the five people who were driving these vehicles within this period have also been interviewed," said the official.
[The 5 doubts about the Debanhi Escobar case that the Prosecutor's Office has not yet resolved]
Debanhi Escobar disappeared that morning after the taxi driver who was supposed to take her home left her alone on the side of the road near the hotel after picking her up at the party where she was with friends.
The young woman's body was found 13 days later inside an abandoned motel cistern with the clothes she had on that night.
In the last week, between complaints from Escobar's family for alleged irregularities in the judicial investigation, videos of security cameras have been revealed that may provide clues about what happened to the young woman, whose cause of death, according to the first autopsy performed, it was a blow to the skull.
Her family has requested another autopsy and suspects that she was a victim of sexual abuse.
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One of the videos presented by the Prosecutor’s Office began to circulate on social networks, taken by a camera inside the motel restaurant, in which a vehicle appears that stops at the edge of the road around 5:47 in the morning of the 9 of April.
Then an unidentified person gets into the car.
This happened 40 minutes after the last recorded image of the young woman alive, taken by the taxi driver, which shows her walking in the direction of the motel.
The prosecutor said that the testimony of a man was taken, but without giving details about whether Debanhi Escobar could be the person who got into the car: "We have interviewed who was and who responds as the owner of the vehicle and who was driving."
The investigators will also interview the 70 attendees of the party in a country house in the municipality of Escobedo where the young woman was with her friends, added the prosecutor.
The death of Debanhi Escobar was classified last week as a femicide and has sparked a wave of protests due to the fed up with the levels of sexist violence in Mexico.
The state of Nuevo León has the highest rates of murders and disappearances of women in the entire country.
[“It's good that you're looking for Debanhi Escobar because maybe she's on the same side as my daughter and they all show up”]
Flowers on the facade of the Attorney General's Office surround a photograph of Debanhi Escobar that was placed during a protest, on Friday, April 22, 2022, in Mexico City, against the disappearance of Escobar and other women in Mexico.Eduardo Executioner / AP
For 13 days, investigators gathered at the motel to search for the 18-year-old girl, whose last mobile phone signal had been detected near the scene.
"How many times were they here?" Her father questioned when her body was found in the motel cistern after workers reported that there was "a bad smell."
[Debanhi Escobar's friends tell their version of the events: "We were desperate, we didn't know what to do"]
The prosecutor pointed out that the motel employees, who did not initially deliver the videos of the night of Debanhi's disappearance, will be punished.
The Prosecutor's Office will also interview all the clients that the motel had during those 13 days.
When the investigators were on the scene looking for the young woman, the prosecutor said, the employees also did not mention the existence of that disused cistern.
She added that no one entered or searched the tank area during the search.
The official indicated that several lines of investigation are followed in the face of the death of the young woman, without one prevailing over the others.