Funeral held for Warmbier
WYOMING, Ohio — Hundreds of mourners gathered Thursday to celebrate the life of an American college student who was detained in North Korea for more than a year and died shortly after being returned home to Ohio in a coma.
Otto Warmbier’s brother, sister and friends were among the scheduled speakers for the funeral Thursday at a high school in his hometown of Wyoming, near Cincinnati. A rabbi was officiating at the public service, which was closed to the news media.
U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, a Republican from the Cincinnati area, told the throng of reporters stationed outside that Warmbier was “an amazing young man” from a resilient family and that North Korea must be held accountable for what happened to the 22-yearold University of Virginia student, who died Monday.
“This college kid never should have been detained in the first place,” said Portman, who previously revealed that he met secretly with North Korean officials in New York last December to press for Warmbier’s release. He said North Korea’s treatment of Otto demonstrated “a basic disregard for human rights, for human dignity.”
Warmbier was accused of trying to steal a propaganda banner while visiting North Korea in 2015 and was later convicted of subversion. His family said they were told that he had been in a coma since shortly after he was sentenced to prison with hard labour in March, 2016.
After he returned to Ohio, doctors determined he had suffered a “severe neurological injury” of unknown cause. Warmbier’s family objected to an autopsy, so the Hamilton County coroner’s office conducted only an external examination of his body and is still trying to determine his cause of death.
It was his life that held mourners’ attention Thursday as they fondly remembered a spirited student-athlete who was socially magnetic and had a positive impact on the people around him.
His former soccer coach, Steve Thomas, said Warmbier came from a religious family and was involved in mission trips and a birthright trip to Israel.
“He had a deep desire to know God in a personal way,” Thomas said. “He wasn’t big on doing things because he was supposed to do it. He did things because he wanted to do them.”