It seemed like happy news last week when it was announced that Otto Warmbier, a U.S. college student, would return home from North Korea after being detained there for more than a year. But then it was announced that he was in a coma—and that he’d suffered severe brain damage from unknown causes. On Monday afternoon, just six days after Warmbier landed back on U.S. soil, his family announced that the 22-year-old has died.
Statement from his family. This breaks my heart. pic.twitter.com/j8CwQQspel
— Yashar Ali (@yashar) June 19, 2017
“It is our sad duty to report that our son, Otto Warmbier, has completed his journey home. Surrounded by his loving family, Otto died today at 2:20 p.m.,” his family said in a statement. “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.”
Warmbier was detained in North Korea in January 2016, when the country claimed he had tried to steal a political poster while on a tourism trip with a company called Young Pioneer Tours. He “confessed” to this crime in March 2016, though North Korea is known for coercing false confessions.