Mexican authorities told Kimberly Williams, wife of California lawyer Elliot Blair, that her husband was shot in the head the night he died at a resort in Rosarito.Mexico, as revealed by the lawyer representing the family to the New York Post.
The Mexican authorities, however, denied that claim.
The revelation is yet another in a series of conflicting statements between the grieving Blair family and Mexican authorities about what led to the death of the Orange County public defender last Saturday at Las Rocas Resort and Spa.
Blair’s family and friends have insisted she was the victim of a “brutal crime”, while Mexican authorities have said her death was due to an accidental fall from a balcony at the resort.
The family has made it clear that they are conducting their own investigation into the lawyer’s death with the help of private investigators.
While Blair fell two stories before hitting the ground floor, Family attorney Case Barnett said in an interview Thursday that the family isn’t sure what happened in the moments leading up to that.
Barnett said part of the puzzlement stems from the fact that Police told Blair’s wife, Kimberly Williams, that there was a “bullet hole in Elliot’s head.” The couple was celebrating their first anniversary when Blair died.
The family’s lawyer also revealed that the prosecutor’s office in Mexico ordered the embalming of the 33-year-old’s body, which would make it impossible for the family to carry out its own toxicology report. Mexican authorities have also refuted that claim.
After Williams learned of the incident, a family friend near the area came to the scene and interpreted for him, said Barnett, who is a friend of Blair’s.
“The police officer on the scene, the lead investigating officer, in plain clothes with a badge around his neck, tells Kim that there is a bullet hole in Elliot’s head,” Barnett said. “And that led to all this with the violence of the matter.”
A spokesperson for the Baja California attorney general’s office told the Los Angeles Times that when officials arrived on the scene and in a subsequent autopsy “there were no signs of violence.” He also reportedly denied any evidence of a gunshot wound.
Barnett said that when the liaison with the coroner’s office contacted the family days later, they were told the cause of death was head trauma and the death would be referred to prosecutors as a suspected homicide.
When the family inquired about a gunshot wound, the liaison said the report indicated head trauma, Barnett said.
“The liaison said if it had been a gunshot to the head, it wouldn’t say trauma, it would say gunshot wound to the head,” Barnett said, adding. “So the family is confused.”
The family plans to conduct its own autopsy when the body is returned to them, Barnett said, adding that the family is disappointed that it could not produce a toxicology report to refute claims that he was intoxicated when he died because he was embalmed.
The morgue told the family that the process was carried out on the orders of prosecutors, Barnett alleged.
“The family is obviously devastated that under these bizarre circumstances they wanted their own toxicology,” he said. “Now they can’t get their own toxicology because the body has been embalmed.”
The Baja California prosecutor’s office told the Los Angeles Times that the decision on what to do with the body rests with the family.
He stressed to the newspaper that authorities would not suggest that a body be embalmed without the family’s permission.
The family previously claimed that Mexican officials suggested that Blair’s body be cremated.
Barnett also shed more light on a different set of statements between the police and Blair’s relatives.
The Baja California attorney general reportedly said Blair fell to her death when she went out to shoo pigeons outside her hotel room.
Authorities said Williams told investigators that Blair was attracted to the noisy birds, a claim the family denied to the Orange County Record.
Barnett said Williams was talking to a family friend at the scene about how he scared off pigeons during the day from his third-floor hotel room at Las Rocas Resort and Spa.
He believes the attorney general interpreted that statement to mean that he was shooing away pigeons the night before his death.
Baja California prosecutor General Ricardo Iván Carpio Sánchez said his death was originally investigated as a criminal case, the Los Angeles Times reported. An examination of his body reportedly found no visible injuries from a weapon or a sharp object.
Barnett said the two were in the bedroom together after returning from a night out, but Williams fell asleep before Blair.
Barnett said Williams was originally awakened by hotel staff to inform her of her husband’s death and then called for help.
But hotel workers told him that an ambulance was already there a couple of hours ago, and that he was dead and the police were now on their way, he said.
It’s not clear what Blair was doing before her death, Barnett said.
“We don’t know what he was doing out there,” Barnett said of Blair. “We’re trying to find out.”
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