The Mexican teenage girl, who was found dead in a motel water tank, was filmed buying alcohol with her two friends and fighting a young man outside a party, then walking down a street and later entering a motel before her mysterious death ran, new surveillance camera footage revealed.
Videos obtained by Milenio TV on Wednesday show 18-year-old law student Debanhi Escobar arguing on the morning of April 9 and being followed by a person before punching and kicking him. According to the video, her two friends and several young men rushed to intervene.
Moments later, another security camera caught Escobar getting into the back of a taxi driven by Juan David Cuellar, who took the final haunting photograph of Escobar standing by the curb. Another video shows Escobar, now in the passenger seat, getting out of the taxi near the Nueva Castilla Motel, where authorities discovered her body on April 21.
Prosecutors trying to piece together Escobar’s movements after exiting the taxi also released a video showing her walking on a sidewalk and then crossing to the middle of a street before returning to the sidewalk.
She continued walking and stopped just outside Transportes Internacionales Alcosa, a trucking company, at 4:29 a.m. – three minutes after Cuellar took her picture.
The attorney general’s office provided additional video footage showing the teen running toward the motel driveway at 4:35 a.m. and a minute later looking through the door of a restaurant outside the motel.
Escobar then fell into one of the three uncovered cisterns, cracked his head open and drowned, according to Eduardo Villagómez, director of state forensic services
“She lived (for a moment) where she was found and there was an opportunity for her to respond,” he said.
The cause of death was a contusion of the skull and it is being determined as a homicide, officials said.
Debanhi Escobar, the 18-year-old law student who was reported missing after a party with friends on April 8 and was found dead on April 21 in an uncovered cistern at a motel in Nuevo León, Mexico. New videos have emerged showing her and two friends buying liquor hours before she got into an argument with a young man outside a party. She then got into a cab before about to exit and was seen on camera walking near a trucking company and running into the motel
A surveillance camera captured the moment when Debanhi Escobar (right) and a young man fought outside a property early in the morning on April 9 while attending a party in Escobedo, a town in Mexico’s northeastern state of Nuevo León. She had gone out with two friends on the night of April 8 but never returned home and was reported missing. She was found in a motel water tank on April 21
The Nuevo León Attorney General’s Office released a video Wednesday showing Debanhi Escobar walking past a trucking company on the morning of April 9, just before entering a motel where she stayed on April 21
The Mexican teenager was caught by a security camera running to the Nueva Castilla Motel, where investigators say she fell into one of the three cisterns and was found dead on April 21
It remains unclear whether she accidentally fell or was pushed into the cistern.
Prosecutors said the motel did not place surveillance cameras in the area where the water tanks are located.
Attorney General Gustavo Guerrero, who has sought transparency in the face of allegations by the teenager’s family of withholding information from the investigation, also announced the dismissal of prosecutors Rodolfo Salinas and Javier Caballero from the kidnapping and missing persons unit for failing to provide details had left out.
“We need to put the puzzle together with what we have and what we are receiving to clarify the reason for Debanhi’s death,” Guerrero said.
Debanhi Escobar was photographed by an app driver, identified as 47-year-old Jesús Nuevo León of Mexico, on the morning of April 9 after she decided to get out of the car after an alleged argument
The body of 18-year-old Debanhi Escobar was found in a water tank on a property next to the Nueva Castilla Motel in Nuevo León, Mexico
Mario Escobar still doesn’t rule out that his daughter was murdered and is considering exhuming her body to conduct a second autopsy.
“There are many hypotheses about how my daughter could have been alive, how she could have been kidnapped, how she fell without seeing it, how she could have been placed there,” he said. “In other words, so that you understand me, we do not exclude any investigative direction. I think I’m calm…because they’re answering what we’ve been talking about.”
Debanhi Escobar went partying with two friends in Escobedo, Mexico, on April 8 before being reported missing after failing to return home. She was found on April 21 in a water tank on the grounds of a motel
Taxi driver Juan David Cuellar said Debanhi Escobar’s friends refused to give her home address
The family hopes the new details will help solve the mystery surrounding Debanhi Escobar’s death.
“Unfortunately, my daughter is not here. But what my wife and I are asking for … is that this case be solved,” said Mario Escobar. “We want everything to be clarified so that we remain calm. Right now we are calm as a family in the aspect that we have a place where we can cry to my daughter, where we can bring her a rose.’
Debanhi Escobar was reported missing in April after failing to return home after a night out with her two friends.
Cuellar picked up the three young women after one of them ordered a taxi via the DiDi Ride Share app.
He dropped them off at a bar and gave them his home number after they asked if he could pick them up later that evening.
In an interview with INFO7 on Tuesday night, Cuellar revealed he received a WhatsApp message from one of the two girls around 4am, but when he arrived Escobar got into the vehicle and the friends drove away in a separate car.
Once inside the vehicle, Escobar told him that the girls were bad friends because they left them behind.
Cuellar recalled that she was crying and he tried to get her home address to drop her off, but she refused to give it. He then sent a message to one of the girls asking for directions to Escobar’s house, but she also refused to relay them.
Dolores Bazaldua (left) and Mario Escobar (right), parents of Debanhi Escobar, are comforted by a priest during a mass on Saturday before their 18-year-old daughter’s funeral in Galeana, Mexico
Debanhi Escobar’s death is being investigated as a feminicide
At one point, Escobar asked for a cell phone charger, got out of the rear passenger seat, and sat in the front.
Cuellar said Escobar was making incoherent comments and again asked for her address.
She asked Cuellar to drop her off at another party, but when they got there, she didn’t get off.
Cuellar said he eventually got her home address from her friends, but when he started driving Escobar there, she asked him to stop and get off.
“That’s where I took the picture and I’ll let her friend know that she got out,” said Cuellar, who parked his car and then drove away after she refused to get back in.
“I wanted to help her from the first moment,” Cuellar said. “I told her there was no problem. I’ll take you to your home Just tell me where you live.”