Otto Warmbier’s parents say their son was emitting an “inhuman howl” and “jerking violently” the first time they saw him following his release from a North Korean prison — but a newly released coroner’s report states otherwise.
“Otto had a shaved head, he had a feeding tube coming out of his nose, he was staring blankly into space, jerking violently,” Otto’s father Fred told Fox & Friends. “He was blind. He was deaf. As we looked at him and tried to comfort him, it looked like someone had taken a pair of pliers and rearranged his bottom teeth.”
The 22-year-old college student, who in 2016 was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for stealing a propaganda in Pyongyang, died in June at a Cincinnati hospital after his fever spiked to 104 degrees. While North Korean officials say Warmbier fell into a coma after contracting botulism and taking a sleeping pill, American medical authorities disagree — not just with North Korea’s explanation, but also with the Warmbier family’s declarations of torture.
The Hamilton County Coroner’s examination released by the Cincinnati Enquirer and obtained by Fox News shows “small scars” on Warmbier’s body, but none consistent with torture; it also states that Warmbier’s teeth were “natural and in good repair,” with a nose and ears incurring “no remarkable altercation.”
His cause of death was ruled as brain damage due to a lack of oxygen from a head injury that occurred more than a year ago.
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