Tourists from North America have been found dead in the Colombian city of Medellin in circumstances that have baffled local police.
Three visitors from the US and Canada were found in the space of just a month, and in one incident, a woman was found dead on a bed “with foam in her nose and mouth”.
The first case concerned 34-year-old Justin Patrick Goldberg, who traveled to Colombia and stayed in room 1005 of the Nutibara Hotel.
He was seen on hotel security cameras walking down a corridor at around 11.50pm on February 9. He then wandered onto a roof on the fifth floor, took his shoes off, and fell.
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Mr Goldberg fell onto Carrera 50 and Calle 52A, dying as a result.
Investigators are still trying to work out why Mr Goldberg, from New Jersey in the US, traveled to Colombia and whether he deliberately took his own life.
Drugs and amphetamines were found in Mr Golderg’s room when it was searched after his death.
An autopsy also found traces of narcotics such as tetrahydrocannabidol (present in marijuana) in his body.
Investigators ruled out murder and presumed her death came as a result of a drug overdose.
The third North American visitor found dead in Medellin was Thomas Smith Gordon, who fell from a seventh-floor window at the Eutopiq hotel.
Mr Gordon, a 35-year-old man from Richmond Hill, Canada, had been staying there for a month before his death.
Investigator’s report that “several plastic bags containing a white powdery substance, apparently cocaine” were found in Mr Gordon’s room.
Newspaper El Pais reports that six foreigners have been found dead in Medellin during the first four months of 2023.
This takes the number of visitors found dead in the city since the start of 2022 to 20.
The most recent case involves an Argentinian who was found dead in a hotel in Antioquia.
Police were alerted when a hotel receptionist found the man, Oscar Marecos, lying in one of the rooms having sustained several stab wounds.
An official report into the man’s death said that a knife was found in the room, and that the victim had four stab wounds on his neck and two on each forearm.
Drugs were also found.
Marecos was reportedly travelling through Colombia to Panama, and was planning to leave the country on May 1 before his death.
Carlos Calle, leader of the Tourism Observatory of the Medellín Personería, expressed concern at the number of tourists being found dead in the city.
He said: “There has been an upward trend in terms of violent deaths, not just murders; violent death can be drug use, homicide or a bad cosmetic procedure.”
Colonel Ómar Rodríguez, a security official from Medellin, warned that criminals often attack tourists through “the use of women who profile the victims”.
He added: “Another is the use of social networks by criminal groups who take advantage of them to meet people and look for dates. Confident in their plans to have fun, foreigners go to public establishments and that is where they fall into the hands of these criminals.”
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