Otto Frederick Warmbier released from North Korea prison is dead. The 22 year old arrived from North Korea in a coma. He was arrested for stealing a propaganda poster from his hotel, and sentenced to 15 years of hard labour in the North Korea prison.
The family of Otto appreciated the staff of the hospital for the care they provided for Otto;
The awful torturous mistreatment our son received at the hands of the North Koreans ensured that no other outcome was possible beyond the sad one we experienced today.
It would be easy at a moment like this to focus on all that we lost – future time that won’t be spent with a warm, engaging, brilliant young man whose curiosity and enthusiasm for life knew no bounds.
But we choose to focus on the time we were given to be with this remarkable person. You can tell from the outpouring of emotion from the communities that he touched – Wyoming, Ohio and the University of Virginia to name just two – that the love for Otto went well beyond his immediate family.
North Korea claimed that the American had botulism, and never woke up after taking a sleeping pill, but doctors in Cincinnati claimed that this not true, and Otto has shown no sign of botulism since in arriving in the US, but he had suffered severe neurological injury, and he is in a state of unresponsiveness wakefulness.