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In another story with an international dimension, the death of three American women in a San Pedro hotel room has become global news -and is making the headlines on all the US local and national news outlets. And all those outlets are focusing on the fact that there are no clear answers on what caused their death.
But today, there seems to be a coordinated response from local authorities to try and allay some of the concerns of international media.
In a recent Zoom Interview with CBS Boston, The commissioner of Police, the Executive Director of the Belize National Forensic science service and the Fire Chief for the National Fire Service provided that news station with an update.
According to the director for the National Forensic science service, the autopsy they conducted on Monday on all 3 women revealed that they died from acute pulmonary edema, meaning the build up of fluid in the lungs. Now they are trying to determine what caused this in all three women all at once. Gian Cho told CBS Boston that they are now conducting more in depth studies on the bodies. And the fire chief filed in that they have also ruled out the possibility of Carbon Monoxide poisoning. Here are their comments.
Gian Cho, Executive Director, Belize National Forensic, Science, Service
"The process for further testing involves three different sections or scopes if you will. The first one we will start this week is to try to identify what types of controlled substances or drugs, if any, were in some of the samples taken from the scene. So these were from different items collected from the hotel room to see if there were any controlled substances found in those. But those are not from the autopsy samples, so these are scene, part of the scene investigations. So that is underway that will start this week. So by next week we should have an idea of what types of substances, if any, were found in the room. The toxicology samples - which is the blood and the tissue samples - are taken from autopsy. We will start with sending those out to the USA because there is a laboratory that we use in the USA where we outsource advanced toxicology that we cannot do in country. And upon receipt of those samples at that laboratory, the turnaround time that is scheduled on the expedited schedule and we should be able to get some results within, anywhere from 7 to 14 days. It's hard to peg down an exact turnaround time if the toxicology analysis yields various analytes in the samples, analytes meaning the substances whether drugs or poisons or chemicals."
Colin Gillett, Fire Chief, National Fire Service
"So we went, our firefighters went to the room yesterday around 2 along with two other police officers to do the testing for Carbon monoxide presence and they found nothing. Just to make sure that to be safe, we went back again this morning around 11:00 and we tried to recreate the same similar environment which the ladies would have been in: so, close the doors, the AC, things like that and again we found nothing again this morning. So basically this rules out the presence of Carbon Monoxide in that room."
Commissioner Chester Williams was also in that Zoom interview.
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