The final autopsy report on a San Diego State exchange student whose body was pulled from a Madrid river last March indicates an accidental drowning death with no signs of external violence, a Spanish court official said on Tuesday.
The student, Austin Taylor Bice, 22, was studying a semester of business courses at the University of Carlos III in Madrid when he went missing after a night out with friends. He was last seen outside a nightclub on the banks of Madrid's Manzanares River. Ten days later, on March 8, police pulled his body from the river.
"There was nothing found in the body that would indicate external factors in the death. There were no wounds on the body," said the official from Madrid's Superior Justice Tribunal. He spoke on the customary condition of anonymity.
He said the autopsy also showed a "high level" of alcohol in the blood.
A Madrid judge has kept the case, which is confidential by law, open for further investigation. There was no immediate word on when it might be closed definitively, the official said.
After his disappearance, Bice's friends quickly organized a campaign to put up posters of him around Madrid, which read "Missing. Austin Taylor Bice. U.S. citizen, 22, 1.95 meters tall and 100 kilograms" (6 feet, 5 inches and 220 pounds), and Spanish and U.S. media reported on the search.
Bice's father Larry, an accountant, rushed to Madrid from San Diego to search for his son and met several times with Spanish and U.S. authorities.
The family hired private investigators, at first to try to find the student, and later, after his body was recovered, to try to determine what happened, the elder Bice told CNN.
At the time of the search, a family member told CNN in Madrid that contrary to initial reports, Bice was not refused entry to the nightclub by doormen and was not drunk, although "he had a few beers." Instead, he just decided to go home.
On March 8, when police recovered the body, an initial visual inspection did not indicate any signs of violence, Madrid officials said at the time.
The U.S.-based Institute of International Education said that in 2007, Spain was the third most popular destination worldwide for Americans studying abroad, after the United Kingdom and Italy. It said there were about 17,000 American students in Spain.
The University of Carlos III, where Bice was studying, has 18,000 students, of whom 1,500 are from abroad, including about 220 Americans, Carlos Lopez Terradas, the school's head of international relations,
You Might Also Like :
0 comments:
Post a Comment