Anne Saker

The Cincinnati Enquirer

CINCINNATI — The Hamilton County coroner examining Otto Warmbier found he had a collection of small scars on his body, but none appear serious enough to indicate he was tortured while he was imprisoned in North Korea.

The coroner’s report, which The Cincinnati Enquirer obtained Tuesday, only deepened the mystery of what happened to the 22-year-old University of Virginia student, who died six days after he returned to Cincinnati after being imprisoned for 17 months by the North Korean government.

Warmbier was evacuated from that reclusive dictatorship — in a coma — on June 13. Warmbier's mother and sister ran off the plane when they first saw him lying on a stretcher at Lunken Airport in Cincinnati, Otto's father, Fred Warmbier, said in an interview on Fox and Friends on Tuesday morning.

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"Otto was jerking violently, making these inhuman sounds," said Fred Warmbier.

"Otto had a shaved head. He had a feeding tube coming out of his nose. ... 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 re-arranged his bottom teeth."

Fred and Cindy Warmbier, of suburan Wyoming, Ohio, said they decided to speak out now because they feel that North Korea is being painted as a victim in global politics right now.

"North Korea is not a victim. They are terrorists," Fred Warmbier said.

Fred Warmbier said he and his wife were astounded to learn that North Korea is not listed as a state sponsor of terror.

"We owe it to the world to list North Korea as a state sponsor of terror."

"They destroyed him," said Cindy Warmbier.

"The fact that Otto was alone all that time was inexcusable."

Otto Warmbier went to North Korea with Young Pioneer Tours, a China-based tour company. He was arrested Jan. 2, 2016, in Pyongyang, the nation’s capital.

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He was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for allegedly stealing a poster from a staff-only section of a hotel in North Korea. In a televised statement in March 2016, Otto apologized and said he was impressed by the country’s “fair and square legal procedures” and its “humanitarian treatment of severe criminals like myself.”

After Warmbier returned to Cincinnati, doctors said he did not have any broken bones or marks on his body other than those which indicated medical treatment.

The doctors also said they found no indication of botulism — the explanation North Korean officials gave as leading to the coma — although it is likely the toxin would no longer be in the body after more than a year.

President Trump said Otto Warmbier was "tortured beyond belief," in a tweet after the Fox interview aired.

But the coroner’s postmortem examination of Otto Warmbier did not indicate the young man’s teeth had been disfigured. “The teeth are natural and in good repair,” the report said, and his nose and ears show “no remarkable alteration.”

Deputy county coroner Dr. Gretel Stephens, with oversight by the elected coroner, Dr. Lakshmi Sammarco, conducted the examination and wrote the report. The cause of death, the report noted, was brain damage from a lack of oxygen “due to an unknown insult more than a year prior to death" — insult, in this case, meaning an injury. The coroner limited the investigation to examining Warmbier’s body because his parents declined an autopsy.

The coroner’s report of the young man’s “well-developed, well-nourished” body lists at least small 10 scars. At least half of them were pale, indicating they were older. Newer scars with bruising, such as one on his right side of his neck, could have come from medical treatment, such as for an intravenous line. Another at the top of Warmbier’s sternum is “consistent with a tracheostomy scar,” made to insert a breathing tube, although when that could have happened is not clear in the report.

The Enquirer left a message with Fred Warmbier Tuesday in an effort to reconcile the parents' comments with the coroner's report.

Dr. Brian Peterson, coroner of Milwaukee County, Wis., is president of the National Association of Medical Examiners. He reviewed the Warmbier report at The Enquirer’s request to clarify terminology, and he stressed he was not speaking directly about the case.

Some of the older scars look like something an athletic boy might acquire as part of growing up, he said.

“Hypothetically, could these things happen if you’re in a rough prison in North Korea? That might explain some of these things, but there’s nothing specific to show that,” he said.

The Warmbiers’ television appearances — they later appeared on CNN as well — and the president’s Twitter comment occurred at a tense geopolitical moment.

Relations between the United States and North Korea have rarely been worse since the Korean War in the 1950s, when U.S. troops fought with South Korea against forces from the North.

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Today the stakes couldn't be higher. North Korea, an isolated nation ruled by a dictator, has an arsenal of nuclear weapons and missiles that can reach U.S. allies in the region, and possibly the U.S. mainland.

The rhetoric exchanged by Trump and Kim Jong Un are the most bellicose ever between leaders of the two countries. Trump this month dismissed Kim as “rocket man" and threatened to destroy North Korea. Kim responded by calling Trump a "dotard" and compared him to a frightened dog. On Friday, Trump called Kim a "madman."

North Korea's foreign minister said Monday that Trump has declared war on the nation and that Pyongyang has the right to shoot down U.S. military aircraft.

"Since the United States declared war on our country, we have every right to take counter measures," Ri Yong Ho told the media as he was leaving the United Nations. "Including shooting down U.S. strategic bombers, even when they are not yet inside the airspace border of our country."

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Pentagon spokesman Col. Robert Manning quickly responded that "if North Korea does not stop their provocative actions, you know, we will make sure that we provide options to the president to deal with North Korea."

Later Monday, the Trump administration said it's not seeking to overthrow North Korea's government after the president tweeted that leader Kim "won't be around much longer" and called Pyongyang's assertion ridiculous that Donald Trump's comment amounted to a declaration of war.

Contributing: Jane Onyanga-Omara and John Bacon, USA TODAY. Follow The Cincinnati Enquirer on Twitter: @Enquirer

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