Starvation likely killed Franco-Irish teen in Malaysia, no sign of foul play
AVULNERABLE Franco-Irish teen who disappeared from a Malaysian rainforest resort likely starved and died of internal bleeding, with no immediate sign of foul play, police said on Thursday.
Nora Quoirin, 15, is t hought to have died t wo or t hree days ago after a week in the jungle, and there was no indication she was abducted or assaulted, police said, citing t he results of an autopsy.
Her unclothed body was discovered on Tuesday in a ravine in dense jungle following a 10-day hunt involving hundreds of people, helicopters and sniffer dogs.
She went missing from the Dusun Resort, not far from Kuala Lumpur, on August 4, a day after checking i n for a holiday with her Londonbased family.
Her family believed t he teen, who had learning difficulties, had been abducted but police classified her disappearance as a missing persons case.
Speaking after the postmortem examination, Negeri Sembilan state police chief Mohamad Mat Yusop told reporters the teen suffered “bleeding in her intestines due to not eating” as well as “extreme stress”.
“For t he time being, t here is no suspicion of foul play,” he
said. She had some scratches on her body after days in the jungle but there was no indication she was sexually assaulted or k idnapped, he added.
Her body was airlifted by helicopter out of t he rav ine – about 2.5km (1.5 miles) from t he resort – and transported to hospita l in Seremban town where her relatives identified it.
Medics conducted a long autopsy on Wednesday, starting in the morning and only finishing late at night, as a media pack waited outside the hospital for news.
‘Unbearable’ loss
In a statement released on Wednesday by The Lucie Blackman Trust, a charity that supports relatives of British people missing overseas, her relatives said she was the “heart” of the family.
“She is the truest, most precious girl and we love her infinitely. The cruelty of her being taken away is unbearable. Our hearts are broken.
“We will a lways love our Nora.”
While insisting it was a missing persons case, police vowed to investigate every angle. They questioned witnesses and investigated witness accounts of a truck heard early on the morning the girl disappeared.
A group of volunteers who were part of the search and rescue team found the body after being tipped off by a member of the public.
It was discovered in the official search zone, in an area that the team had previously covered.
On Monday, the family had offered a 50,000 ringgit ($11,900) reward, donated by a Belfast business, for information that could lead to her return.
The five-hectare (12-acre) resort where the teenager disappeared is next to a patch of thick jungle and in the foothills of a mountain range.
Her family had said it was extremely unlikely the reserved youngster would have wandered off on her own.
She had a condition known as holoprosencephaly, where the brain fails to develop normally. She had limited verbal communication and could only write a few words.
She attended a school for young people with learning difficulties.