The report also had some information that ran counter to his parent’s account of his injuries and alleged torture.
Otto Warmbier’s death was caused by lack of oxygen and blood to the brain, according to a coroner’s report released Wednesday. The report also had some information that ran counter to his parent’s account of his injuries.
The coroner said that the death was caused by an unknown injury that had happened to Warmbier more than a year before his death. The coroner performed an external examination and not a full autopsy at the request of his parents.
“We don’t know what happened to him and that’s the bottom line,” said the coroner, Dr. Lakshmi Kode Sammarco.
The manner of death is listed as “undetermined.” Sammarco also said that the student had no clear signs of torture, something that his parents and President Donald Trump insisted on.
“Great interview on @foxandfriends with the parents of Otto Warmbier: 1994 – 2017. Otto was tortured beyond belief by North Korea,” tweeted Trump after Warmbier’s parents gave their first television interview on Fox Tuesday.
Warmbier was a University of Virginia student who was detained in North Korea and was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in 2016 for allegedly stealing a poster from a hotel in Pyongyang. Warmbier was visiting North Korea en route to study abroad in China.
