This is very unusual for a previously healthy young dental patient., And a declaration filed by Daniel Kanter, the neurologist who was the lead physician for Otto Warmbier upon his return at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, said Otto died of severe brain damage resulting from being deprived of oxygen, which was caused by the sustained cessation of blood flow to the brain for about five to 20 minutes. His parents did not cite a specific cause of death but blamed. Hundreds of people lined the streets to witness Otto's hearse, and many made the W hand gesture representing his high school. Nothing in my treatment of Otto would have led me to expect this sort of change as a result of natural occurrence., Warmbiers dentist between 2014 and 2015, Todd Williams, also of Cincinnati, Ohio, declared Otto had excellent teeth with an excellent bite between the upper and lower teeth. All-American In a white two-story home flying the Stars and Stripes, Otto grew up the eldest child of a Republican family. Pueblo to restaurants. So Yun traveled to Norway to meet several high-level North Korean officials on the sidelines of secret nuclear negotiations, conducted by retired diplomats to get around the lack of official contact. As the Trump administration and North Korea spun Otto's story for their own ends, I spent six months reportingfrom Washington, D.C., to Seoultrying to figure out what had actually happened to him. A coroner's report on Otto Warmbier's death appears to conflict with his family's claims that he was tortured by the North Koreans View gallery In a Tuesday interview, Fred Warmbier said 'it. We tell stories so that we can make sense of irresolvable unknowns and then act. Otto's eyes remained wide open and blank. He was released on medical grounds in June this year but arrived home seriously ill and died days later. Fred barely even looked at her as he sat in grieving dignity, his sorrow rebuking her serene ambassadorial smirk. In Manhattan, the North Koreans informed Yun that Otto was unconscious. The North Koreans have never tortured a white guy physically. In Seoul, one North Korean, who had endured three years at a low-level camp for trying to flee the country, wept as she told me: North Korean prisons are actually hell. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories. The Untold Story of Otto Warmbier. . But Gratton and the other tourists, a mix of Canadians, Australians, Europeans, and at least one other American, helped Otto laugh off that dark knowledge, nicknaming him Imperial Enemyas in, Hey, Imperial Enemy, want another beer? Soon enough Otto was having fun again, for even though propaganda billboards showed North Korean missiles blasting the White House, the tour felt more like a bizarre charade than a visit to a hostile nation. The international community is appealing for all incendiary rhetoric to be toned down. Pneumonia, a blood clot, kidney failure or sepsis could have killed Otto Warmbier, but he almost certainly never had a chance of recovering, neurologists said Monday. Warmbier, a 22-year-old American, traveled to North Korea in December 2015 and was taken into custody by North Korean officials at the airport Jan. 2, 2016. He joined a fraternity known for its kind of nerdy dudes, and one of his college friends said that academics and family always took precedence over everything else, from partying to tailgating at football games. The paper quoted the Hamilton County coroner as saying Mr Warmbier's teeth were "natural and in good repair" and that he appeared to have died from brain damage caused by a lack of oxygen. The Americans were chauffeured through the farmland outside Pyongyang to an opulent guesthouse complete with marble staircases, chandeliers, and a full staff, even though they appeared to be the only guests. In early June, Trump and Kim shook hands in front of the red, white, and blue of both nations' flags. He had long been curious about other cultures and had previously visited intrepid destinations like Cuba. The leaders of both countries have directly threatened the other with nuclear annihilation. The story of Otto being brutally beaten had outlived its usefulness. And since he would already be traveling to Hong Kong to study abroad, he decided he wanted to witness the world's most repressive nation: North Korea. Instead, a red-alert situation confronted him. He could offer them few reassurances, explaining, We weren't 100 percent sure where [Otto] was or what had happened to him, as America has scant intelligence assets in North Korea. CINCINNATI --A coroner said Wednesday her office could not determine what led to the fatal brain damage of a young Ohio man detained in North Korea for more than a year. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Ultimately, they declined to comment for this story. However, there was talk Otto's dentists claimed his lower teeth didn't match the placement of previous dental X-rays. Read about our approach to external linking. Fred approached his son and hugged him. Though he had obviously improved since coming into the hospital (he had a tracheotomy scar where machines had once breathed for him), he was in a state of unresponsive wakefulness, meaning he still possessed basic reflexes but no longer showed signs of awareness. He also said his son had been abandoned by his family, his country and the world and that the government had given them no information about his death. The three Korean-Americans, all detained on charges of espionage or hostile acts against the state, had had almost no contact with the outside world since being arrested, and they all cried as they dictated messages for their families to Yun. Fred and Cindy had so despaired during their long vigil that at one point they allegedly told friends that Otto had probably been killed. US student Otto Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years in a North Korean labor camp in 2016. But if Otto was almost certainly not repeatedly beaten, then what put him in a state of non-responsive wakefulness? Otto was born on December 12, 1994, in Cincinnati, Ohio, in the United States. Physically, he returned destroyed in a state of unresponsive wakefulness with a devastating brain injury; he also had a large scar on his left foot and traumatic dental injuries, all of which resulted from North Koreas torture, the complaint stated. According to his dentist, Warmbier's lower teeth were positioned toward the back of his mouth, indicating that pressure was applied to his teeth after May 27, 2015. Even though the state imprisons and sometimes executes citizens trying to flee it, it permits thousands of foreigners to visit every year on tightly controlled toursone of the few ways its sanction-crippled economy makes cash. As a high-level North Korean defector who now works for a South Korean intelligence agency said, North Korea treats its foreign prisoners especially well. At a top-ranked Ohio high school, he boasted the second-best grades. Yun continued to demand access to Otto, and one day in early June he was surprised by a call urgently requesting him to meet with the New York Channel. North Korea has denied mistreating Warmbier, sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in March 2016 for allegedly stealing a propaganda poster two months earlier. The coroner found no evidence of bludgeoning on Otto's body. On CNN, Cindy Warmbier noted a scar on her son's foot, saying it appeared to be "an open wound for months and months and months.". When Otto finally opened his eyes again, he likely found himself at a guesthouse, which is where the State Department believed he was probably kept. He sobbed to his captors, I have made the single worst decision of my life. 2. Otto's arms and legs were totally deformed, according to his parents. Christy Lee and Ahn So-young contributed to this report which originated on VOA Korean. But after a fruitless year of bowing to the Obama administration's admonitions to work behind the scenes, he decided that the era of strategic patience for the Warmbier family [was] over. Early in Trump's presidency, Fred appeared on Fox News, reportedly because he knew that the president obsessively watched the network, to complain that the State Department wasn't doing enough for his son. President Trump hailed him as a catalyst of the summit with Kim Jong-Un. In the footage of his news-conference confession, Otto looked physically healthy, but as he sobbed for his freedom, he was obviously in extreme mental distress. When Yun came in, Pyongyang was still refusing to speak to the Obama administration, but shortly after the day of Trump's inauguration, the mild-mannered but steely former ambassador established contact with the New York Channel about releasing Otto. If they entertain the belief that their son's last conscious moments were spent in fear and physical agony as he was assaulted, that may be the result of the administration's unwillingness to acknowledge a different version of events, one that the facts support. Pueblo, an American Navy spy ship that had been seized by the North Koreans in 1968 and today serves as an odd tourist attraction. What else could he look forward to but physical and mental suffering? On the contrary, the North Koreans have carefully tended to the health of Americans they have captured, caring for them, if needed, in the Friendship Hospital where Otto was kept; 85-year-old detainee Merrill Newman was reportedly visited by a doctor and nurse four times a day. Will we ever know what happened to Otto Warmbier? A coroner's report dated Sept. 11 shows the cause of death for the University of Virginia student as complications from brain-damaging oxygen deprivation through "an unknown insult more than a year prior to death." After Otto Warmbiers death, Dr. Lakshmi Kode Sammarco, the Hamilton County, Ohio, coroner, found no evidence that Otto Warmbier had been tortured. The parents of Otto Warmbier have shared horrific details of his condition when he arrived home from North Korea. Even though the Korean War had stalemated in 1953, the lack of a peace agreement meant that the North was technically still at war with the South and its ally, the U.S. Instead, in the vacuum of fact, North Korea and the U.S. competed to provide a story. I don't believe Otto was physically tortured, Andrei Lankov said in his office in Seoul. The research organization Database Center for North Korean Human Rights confirmed a case of a factory janitor being prosecuted for bumping such a picture off the wall so that it fell and broke. Imagine what Otto must have been feeling after hearing that he would spend the next 15 years laboring in what he probably imagined to be a gulag. FILE - Dr. Lakshmi Kode Sammarco speaks during a news conference regarding the circumstances surrounding the death of 22-year-old University of Virginia undergraduate student Otto Warmbier who was serving a 15-year prison term in North Korea, Sept. 27, 2017. He was an accomplished American college student. So, shortly after Christmas 2015, Otto met the other Young Pioneers in China and boarded an old Soviet jet to Pyongyang. Fred told Otto that he had missed him and was overjoyed to have him home. His name was Otto Warmbier. Meanwhile, the American military made preparations for a possible conflict. To keep foreigners entertained, the 47-story tower is furnished with five restaurants (one of which revolves), a bar, a sauna, a massage parlor, and its own bowling alley. Anyway, this is some of the info I remember reading online a few years ago and it's probably info you've read as well. "Otto's perfectly straight teeth had been rearranged to be . When Trump won, Bergman and Richardson recognized a golden opportunity to free Otto la the release of American hostages in Iran at the beginning of Ronald Reagan's inaugural presidential term. Never. The official said he did not know of the Trump administration having other sources of information about Otto being beaten. And how did his eventual death help push America closer toward war with North Korea and then, in a surprising reversal, help lead to Trump's peace summit with Kim Jong-un? Yun, too, couldn't help but think of his own son, around Otto's age, and about how the Warmbiers would feel when they saw their boy. He took as his theme a quote from The Office: I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days, he told his peers, before you've actually left them.. The US student was jailed in Pyongyang in 2016 for stealing a hotel sign. The South Koreans rushed to Washington. What kind of nightmare did he endure while in captivity? This story originally appeared in the August 2018 issue with the title "American Hostage: The Untold Story of Otto Warmbier.". They had to resuscitate him, then give him oxygen and put him on a ventilator, or he would die. As Yun, the negotiator who helped free Otto, said, The doctors were clear that he had been brought to the hospital within a day of his trial, and that he had been in that same room until I saw him.. Who is to blame for Otto Warmbier's death? As the sun went down, a crowd waved handmade signs welcoming Otto home, and TV crews pushed their cameras against the bars of the perimeter fence. The next day, as the Gulfstream rocketed toward the edge of North Korean airspace, all the Japanese air-traffic controllers could do was aim the plane at Pyongyang and tell the pilot to proceed straight for 20 miles, as there is no official flight path between the countries. Both sides of Otto's brain had suffered simultaneously, meaning it had been starved of oxygen. His parents Fred and Cindy Warmbier, have spoken out about the. Declarations from his pediatric dentist and the dentist he transferred to as an adult, suggest otherwise, as does a declaration filed by the neurologist who led Otto Warmbiers care upon his return from North Korea. To these experts, it made much more sense that Otto was treated like all other detained Americans and that an unexpected catastrophe occurred. His name was Otto Warmbier. The origin of Otto's injury remained a mystery. They say he contracted botulism while in prison but US doctors found no trace of this. You can make a difference here. Soon the administration had raised Otto's case into a signature issue. Cindy was prepared for her son to be changed, but she had not expected this. A meticulous planner, he filled a calendar hung on his dorm wall with handwritten commitments: from assignments to dates to bringing differently abled friends to basketball games. After only 15 minutes, though, each prisoner was escorted away. It remains unclear how Otto Warmbier was deprived of oxygen. US citizens are now banned from travelling to North Korea. I was 90 percent sure they would release him, and that this call would bring an action forcing them to do so.. They had not spoken to their son Otto for a year and a half, since he had been arrested during a budget tour of North Korea. North Korea would later release grainy CCTV camera footage of an unidentifiable figure removing a framed propaganda poster from a wall in a restricted area of the hotel, claiming it was Otto. / CBS/AP. In restaurants, hotel lobbies, and coffee shops near the United Nations, they would hold polite negotiations with the regime's representatives. You may want to read Twitters cookie policy, external and privacy policy, external before accepting. ITAR-TASS News Agency / Alamy Stock Photo, a classmate later wrote in a local newspaper. President Trump, I ask you: Bring my son home, he said. According to an official, at 8:35 A.M., Secretary of State Rex Tillerson telephoned the president to announce that Otto was airborne. North Korea has always denied mistreating Mr Warmbier. And when one takes into account that the entire sourced public case that Otto was beaten derives from that single anonymous official who spoke to The New York Times, the theory begins to crack. Fowle said, At one point [I was told I was not as] forthcoming as I should have been with my answers and [was asked], Would you like to be transferred to a place where conditions might be harsher?. American college student Otto Warmbier is detained in North Korea on subversion-related allegations. While no one can prove what happened to Otto in those final few hours, as Trump encouraged the narrative that Otto was beaten and the White House allowed speculation about possible beatings to spread, the administration gave people license to indulge their worst fears about Otto's fate and act accordingly. The family refused a post-mortem examination because they thought he had suffered enough and "I wasn't going to let him out of my sight," she said. Behind the scenes in Washington, dovish diplomats, like Joseph Yun, were replaced by hawks, like John Bolton, one of the architects of the Iraq war. September 27, 2017 / 8:48 PM In the end, there was no definitive evidence whether or not he was beaten. The staffer claimed that the government never got further intelligence reports indicating Otto was beaten. He had two children and struggled to imagine one in such a state. But Otto would never recover to tell his side of the story. While they toured the ship, the Young Pioneers were regaled by a North Korean who told the foreign visitors about capturing the ship from the imperial enemy. The 82 American sailors captured on the Pueblo were beaten and starved for 11 months before finally being released. Tears spangled his eyes as he said to the assembled reporters, Otto, I love you, and I'm so crazy about you, and I'm so glad you're home. He blamed the Obama administration for failing to win Otto's release sooner, and thanked Trump. The lucky survive on starvation rations while enduring routine beatings and dangerous enforced labor, like coal mining. But that doesn't mean that North Korea doesn't psychologically torture detained Americansin fact, it has always tried to bludgeon them into mental submission. Stepping from the boat, Otto was a little bit shocked, said Danny Gratton, an impish British 40-something greeting-card salesman who was his roommate for the tour. This sort of change would most typically be caused by some sort of impact. Fred and Cindy Warmbier told Fox and Friends that the North Koreans were. In the end, however, despite all the mystery still surrounding Otto, it is essential to remember two facts that endure as unyielding as gravestones: Otto's death and the grief of those he left behind. The KCNA report said several American doctors reportedly involved in the health checkup and treatment of Warmbier submitted medical observation to a federal district court in Washington, D.C., on October 10 to the effect that he had died of torture, alleging that they had concluded his teeth were dislocated and his gum bone damaged by physical force from outside.. In fact, I discovered that the manner of Otto's injury was not as black-and-white as people were encouraged to believe. Though the Warmbiers declined a surgical autopsy, non-invasive scans found no hairline bone fractures or other evidence of prior trauma. After a mourning period, Fred and Cindy appeared on Fox & Friends in September 2017, once more reportedly seeking to catch the president's eye, and called the North Koreans terrorists who had intentionally injured Otto. But the North Koreans were still not ready to release Otto. But her findings, and those of the doctors who had attended Otto, contradicted the Warmbiers' assertions. On TV and social media, and in official speeches, Republican officials cited Otto's death as a reason Kim Jong-un needed to be confronted. I felt there was no point in dragging on. But before he became a rallying cry in the administration's campaign against North Korea, he was just a kid. An American official said that Evan Hunziker tried to kill himself while being held, and less than a month after returning home, he shattered his own skull with a bullet in a run-down hotel. However, a local newspaper in the US has disputed the allegations made by the Warmbiers. Then one of the South Koreans informed the world from the White House driveway that the two leaders would try to resolve their nations' never-ended war in person. The parents of Otto Warmbier have shared horrific details of his condition when he arrived home from North Korea. Likely, the reports were just hearsay. They were apparently not even correct about where Otto was or when he was beaten, for God's sake. The restricted area in the Pyongyang hotel from which Otto allegedly removed a framed propaganda poster. During his seven years as the special envoy for North Korean human-rights issues, King had helped oversee the safe release of more than a dozen imprisoned Americans, so he knew what would happen. But he was in a coma, could not communicate and had severe brain damage. If Otto was repeatedly beaten, as the intel reports suggested, it would logically have been during the two to six weeks between his sentencing, when videos of him showed no signs of physical damage, and April, as the North Korean brain scan was dated. The Cincinnati Enquirer said it had obtained a copy of a coroner's report on Otto Warmbier, based on an external examination, which revealed several small scars but nothing which indicated torture. Since the beginning of 2018, North Korea, hamstrung by sanctions and spooked by full-on preparations for war in Otto's name, had been trying to reset relations with the outside world. In the end, the proxy was reportedly allowed to see only one detaineebut not Otto. Warmbier's parents told a Fox News TV show Tuesday that North Korea tortured and "destroyed" him. To view this content choose accept and continue. They know someday they will have to send them back.. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Sadness flooded him. Flueckiger clapped beside Otto's ear. Otto became a symbol used to build a case for war on emotional grounds, the New York Times editorial board wrote. However, a senior-level American official who reviewed the reports told me, In general, the intel reports were wrong, as the medical examinations have shown. There they off-loaded everyone but Yun, one other diplomat, and Flueckigerfor only those three had been authorized to enter North Korea. But Otto's experience after his arrest is not a black hole, as it has often been portrayed. The 22-year-old University of Virginia student returned to Ohio in a coma after North Korea released him on "humanitarian grounds" in June. Copyright 2023 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. The parents of Otto Warmbier the college student who was detained for 17 months in North Korea then died days after he returned home in a coma called the country "terrorists" for capturing and torturing their son.Otto Warmbier the college student who was detained for 17 months in North Korea then died days after he returned home in a He argued that given the young man's health, Pyongyang had to free him promptly on humanitarian grounds. By the time paramedics carried Otto out of the plane by his legs and armpits and loaded him into an ambulance, Cindy had recovered somewhat. During the year after highlighting the story that Otto was physically tortured, Trump praised Fred and Cindy as good friends and invited them to high-profile events. American student Otto Frederick Warmbier, center, arrives at a court for his trial in Pyongyang, capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, on March 16, 2015. . I would have been willing to fudge that report if I thought it would get Otto released, Flueckiger said. Warmbier entered North Korea as part of a guided tour group on December 29, 2015. Fred Warmbier, Otto's father, said "it looked like someone had taken pliers and tried to rearrange his bottom teeth" when he described the state the 22-year-old was in when he returned to the U.S . Charges filed against homeowner in shooting of Black teen, U.S. diplomatic convoy fired on in Sudan as intense fighting continues, Ohio officers won't face state charges in fatal shooting of Jayland Walker, Family in mourning after deadly Sweet 16 party shooting in Alabama, Nikki Haley's first-quarter fundraising came in lower than campaign claimed, Justice Department to seek longest sentence in any Jan. 6 case so far, Poll: Most say congressional GOP should let Trump probes run their course, Ron DeSantis unveils legislative move targeting Disney, U.S. arrests 2 over alleged secret Chinese police outpost in New York. In my professional opinion, some force was obviously applied to them after his May 27, 2015, appointment. Otto's parents weren't thrilled by the trip, but as his mother later explained, Why would you say no to a kid like this?. Otto was born on December 12, 1994, in Cincinnati, Ohio, in the United States. 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