The strange death of Paula Josette in a prison in Sonora: she went on a conjugal visit and never returned

On January 15 of this year, Briceida Arizona received the call that no mother wants to receive.

The Forensic Institute of Hermosillo, Sonora, asked him to appear at her offices to identify the body of her daughter Paula Josette, 23 years old.

“I was blocked, I didn't understand what was happening,” the woman says on the phone.

It had been less than 24 hours since her daughter had written her last message on WhatsApp.

Paula Josette died inside the Penitentiary Center (Cereso) 2 during a conjugal visit to a prisoner.

The Sonora Prosecutor's Office has declared that it was a sudden heart attack, however, her mother and her lawyers insist that the death be investigated as a murder.

EL PAÍS and independent experts analyze the judicial file riddled with inconsistencies and loose ends.

The suspicious death of Paula Josette raises more questions than answers about what could have happened to her, especially since she was supposedly under the protection of authorities in a state prison.

So far there are seven people charged, all of them free on bail.

On Sunday, January 14, Paula Josette Arizona entered the prison at 6:00 p.m. accompanied by a friend.

The two girls had requested a conjugal visit with two prisoners held in jail.

“I had met this boy on Facebook and he told me his name was Alexis,” says her mother.

“At first I didn't know that he was a prisoner, but then Paula told me,” she remembers.

According to the investigations and the statements of several prison workers, the girl entered the prison without showing any official identification, the first in a long chain of irregularities that occurred that night.

Her mother corroborates that Paula did not have INE, passport or any other official identification.

Despite everything, her name appears in the visitor log for that day.

Three hours later, she was dead.

Penitentiary Center No. 2 on the highway from Hermosillo to Bahía de Kino (State of Sonora).GOOGLE STREETVIEW

During the visit, Paula was with inmate Carlos Alexis Romero, who supposedly alerted the guards that the girl “had fainted.”

Because it was Sunday, there was no doctor or nurse on duty that night.

Prison workers complain that there is too little staff for the more than 500 inmates currently locked up in Cereso number 2.

There is no report that any attempt was made to resuscitate the woman inside the prison.

The deputy commander in charge that night ordered two penitentiary officers to transport the girl's body in a prison van to the Hermosillo General Hospital.

At 10:42 p.m., the young woman was admitted to the hospital's emergency room, almost an hour after prison staff found her unconscious.

At the hospital they tried to revive her with CPR, a dose of adrenaline and another of fentanyl in case it was a possible overdose, however, the doctor on duty declared Paula's death at 10:49 p.m.

According to hospital sources, the young woman arrived at the center in cardiorespiratory arrest and the health workers could only certify her death.

The State Prosecutor's Office has at all times treated the death as a sudden heart attack, however, there are several injuries throughout the body that could be related to what happened to the young woman.

“There is a set of injuries described in the autopsy that cannot be analyzed in isolation, above all, because there is no clarity or certainty as to how the events occurred.

Paula Josette's death should be handled as a suspicious and violent death.

From the beginning it should have been investigated as a probable feminicide or homicide,” says Adriana Rubio, coordinator of the forensic area of ​​the National Citizen Observatory of Femicide.

At no time has the Prosecutor's Office mentioned that it is investigating the case from a gender perspective, even though a 2015 Supreme Court ruling indicates that every suspicious death of a woman must be investigated in this way.

“A simple reading of what is described seems that this set of injuries can be attributed to a possible physical assault prior to the loss of life,” adds Dr. Rubio.

Among the blows, bruises (ecchymoses) on the upper and lower extremities stand out.

“In criminology, when we see injuries to the arms, forearms and hands, they are usually injuries that we classify as injuries from struggle, fight, defense or submission,” says Rubio and adds: “Based on what has been described, the red and violet coloration shows us It suggests that the ecchymoses occurred before death and may even be related to the cause and manner of death.”

Petechiae and no trace of cell phone

Briceida Arizona has reported that she could not see her daughter's body when she went to identify the body.

“They only showed me some photos of her face and her tattoos, but they never let me see her body.”

She has also not recovered Paula's belongings the day she entered Cereso: there is no trace of her cell phone, of the clothes she was wearing or of the bag with which she entered the jail.

For 15 days, the family's lawyers have requested color images of the autopsy - a right that all victims have in Mexico - as well as the biological samples taken from the body, however, they denounce that the Prosecutor's Office has not provided them. still delivered, even though he had only five days to comply with the request.

“The area where my daughter was [marital area], the car where she was taken to the hospital and the photographs and videos that were taken of my daughter's body were also not investigated, however, the Prosecutor's Office has given us a negative.

Curiously, the cameras in the penitentiary center were not useful either,” denounces Mrs. Arizona.

The mother has commissioned a second independent forensic expert report that she will seek to integrate into the investigation file and which indicates that the young woman may have been asphyxiated.

In the autopsy, a type of lesion known as “petechiae” appears, reddish dots that are due to bleeding under the skin.

“The presence of petechiae is related in some cases to a lack of oxygen.

The appearance of the petechiae in this case, together with the injuries described above, makes us think that there could have been a type of asphyxiation,” Rubio agrees.

Clonazepam

Gustavo Salas Chávez, State Prosecutor and trusted man of Governor Alfonso Durazo, has indicated that the Prosecutor's Office has identified the type of narcotic that caused the death of the young woman and rules out that it is fentanyl, as initially noted.

This newspaper requested an interview with the prosecutor, but did not receive any response.

Briceida Arizona said a few days ago during an interview with

Uniradio Sonora

that the active ingredient of clonazepam appears in Paula's toxicological analysis, "my daughter was not taking that medication," the woman maintains.

This newspaper has been able to verify that in said analysis the only substance detected is clonazepam, however, no reference is made to the amount found in the young woman's body.

“Clonazepam is a benzodiazepine that lowers the functions of the nervous system and can be used as an anxiolytic or muscle relaxant, but it does not cause death due to cardiac arrest,” says Dr. Silvia Cruz, a drug specialist.

“There are procedures that were carried out, but they are not exhaustive, such as the qualification of the substances found in the toxicological examination.

The authority is missing the principle of opportunity for due diligence,” says Dr. Rubio.

Two months after the death of Paula Josette, there are still more questions than answers surrounding the case, despite the interest that the authorities seem to have in closing it.

For example, how is it possible that a prisoner had access to a cell phone and social networks with which he contacted women from the outside? Why was a woman who was neither his wife nor his partner able to enter the conjugal visit without a official identification? Who authorized that visit? Why were there no medical personnel on a Sunday night? Why did the jail staff take almost an hour to transfer the girl to the hospital when the jail and the hospital They are 15 minutes away by car? And above all, who is responsible for the death of a civilian in a prison when the State is supposed to be the guarantor of her life?

So far the Prosecutor's Office has charged seven people for the death of Paula Josette Arizona.

Among them, the director of the prison Fernando 'N';

the Deputy Commander of Security, Christian Manuel 'N';

the Cereso social worker, Blanca 'N';

the driver of the truck Víctor 'N' and two prison officers, Juan Pedro 'N' and Evangelina 'N'.

All of them are free on bail and protected against a possible crime of reckless homicide.

For Briceida Arizona, the accusations are not enough.

“They thought that Paula didn't have a mother and that no one was going to shout for her, but I'm not going to stop until justice is done,” says the woman.

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