Hometown’s sad farewell to Otto
WYOMING, Ohio — North Korea killed him, and on Thursday morning, his hometown mourned and buried him.
Otto Warmbier — the American student who was fatally injured in the custody of the rogue state — was laid to rest after mourners watched a heartbreaking video from his final days touring Pyongyang in 2016.
In the video, played at the funeral without audio and in slow motion, Warmbier stood with a group of fellow tourists and local children in the scuffed snow of a public square.
More than 2,000 mourners watched inside Warmbier’s former high school in Wyoming, Ohio, as the doomed young man in the video smiled and lobbed a snowball at the camera.
Warmbier,b a University of Virginia undergrad and avid world traveler, would be stopped at the Pyongyang airport days later, moments before his flight out of North Korea.
His next video, taken by his government captors, would show him begging for his life — “Think of my family!” he sobbed — as he was convicted of subversion for taking a propaganda banner as a souvenir.
He suffered a mortal head injury soon after beginning a 15-year sentence, and was flown home in a coma on June 13, dying at age 22 on Monday in a Cincinnati hospital.
“He would always have some unbelievable story to share with us,” a Theta Chi fraternity brother from the University of Virginia said in a eulogy recalling Warmbier’s travel adventures.
Despite his youth, Warmbier had already visited the Galapagos Islands, Israel and Cuba.
“I’ve been waiting for the last 18 months to hear his most grisly [story] yet,” added the frat brother, whose name was not revealed during the ceremony. “Unfortunately, that story will never be shared.”
Rabbi Jake Rubin, who presided over the funeral, called Warmbier “one of the most intellectual and curious people I’ve ever met.”