Otto Warmbier, imprisoned in North Korea, dies in U.S.

Hannah Sparling | The Cincinnati Enquirer

Show Caption Hide Caption Otto Warmbier dies less than a week after his release from North Korea Otto Warmbier was imprisoned in North Korea for more than a year. He died less than a week after his release back to the U.S.

CINCINNATI — No other outcome was possible.

That's the message in a brief statement issued Monday by Otto Warmbier’s family.

Warmbier, 22, was imprisoned for a year and a half in North Korea. He finally made it home this past week, but he was in a coma. Doctors described his condition as a state of “unresponsive wakefulness.”

At 2:20 p.m. ET on Monday, he died.

“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,” reads a statement from parents Fred and Cindy Warmbier.

“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.”

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President Trump and wife Melania offered condolences to the Warmbier family in a statement released Monday by the White House. "Otto's fate deepens my Administration's determination to prevent such tragedies from befalling innocent people at the hands of regimes that do not respect the rule of law or basic human decency," the statement read.

The Warmbiers thanked supporters for their thoughts and prayers and the professionals at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center who cared for their son.

“Unfortunately,” they wrote, “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.”

The death caps a heartbreaking saga that gripped the Warmbiers' small hometown, just a few miles north of Cincinnati. There, in Wyoming, Ohio, Otto Warmbier was a standout soccer player and a 2013 salutatorian at Wyoming High School, his alma mater.

He went on to the University of Virginia, and it was during college, in late 2015, that he traveled to North Korea with a Chinese-based tour group.

UVA President Teresa Sullivan said Monday it was with "great sadness" the university heard of Warmbier's death.

Warmbier was detained at the airport on Jan. 2, 2016, as the group was preparing to leave the country. He was charged with engaging in anti-state activity for allegedly trying to steal a poster from a hotel, and he was sentenced in March 2016 to 15 years of hard labor.

His family got only one letter from him after his televised trial. After that, they heard nothing until shortly before June 13, when he was finally flown home.

Cincinnati doctors gave a press conference on Thursday to discuss Otto Warmbier's condition. They 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 Koreans gave as leading to the coma – although it is likely the toxin would no longer be in the body after more than a year.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Fred Warmbier praised his son’s courage and tried to grapple with the bittersweet homecoming. There is relief, he said, “that Otto is now home in the arms of those who love him. And anger, that he was so brutally treated for so long.”

When he landed at Cincinnati’s Lunken Airport, their son was unable to see or speak, the Warmbiers wrote in their statement on Monday. He wasn’t reacting to verbal commands. “He looked very uncomfortable – almost anguished.”

After just one day, though, his face started to lighten. He looked at peace.

“He was home and we believe he could sense that,” the Warmbiers wrote. “… We are at peace and at home too.”

Contributing: Deirdre Shesgreen, USA TODAY, and Sarah Brookbank, The Cincinnati Enquirer. Follow Hannah Sparling on Twitter: @hksparling