Body found in abandoned cistern in Mexico motel belongs to Debanhi Escobar

The haunting story of a young woman left on the side of a highway late at night in northern Mexico ended in sorrow, with her decomposing body found in a subterranean water tank at a motel.

Assistant Public Safety Secretary Ricardo Mejia said Friday that the woman’s body — apparently unrecognizable after what may have been nearly two weeks in the water — had a crucifix necklace and clothing that Debanhi Escobar was wearing the night she disappeared.

Despite what authorities in the border state of Nuevo Leon described as a massive search for her, the story ended the way it often does in Mexico: when her body was found by local people.

“The alert was sounded by hotel workers, because of the fetid odors coming from the area,” Mejia said.

State prosecutors later said they had confirmed the body was Escobar’s.

Escobar’s case made headlines because of a haunting photo taken by a driver who was supposed to take her home that night. It was not clear why she got out of the car, but her father, Mario Escobar, said prosecutors told him that surveillance camera footage suggested the driver inappropriately touched his daughter.

“I suppose that my daughter did not put up with the harassment,” the father said. The driver has been questioned, though his full name has not been released. Mario Escobar said while the driver may not have killed her, he was responsible for his daughter’s death.

The driver, who worked for a taxi app, took the photo to show Debanhi, 18, got out of his car alive April 8 on the outskirts of the city of Monterrey. There she was, a young woman standing alone at night on the side of a highway, wearing a skirt and high-top sneakers.

The image seemed to speak of the tremendous vulnerability, and the self-assuredness — or desperation — of the young woman.

Nobody saw her until late Thursday, when investigators managed to pull her body from the 12-foot (4-meter) deep water tank near a pool at the roadside motel.

Mario Escobar said “The prosecutors didn’t do their job correctly.”

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Friday the case “has caused, logically, a lot of worry, a lot of concern” among Mexicans.

Critics are disturbed by the fact that even when authorities are spurred to act by public outcry, investigations are seldom very timely or efficient.

During the week that investigators said 200 personnel used drones, search dogs and reviews of security camera footage to look…