After days of wild speculation, first on where Colombian soccer player Leidy Asprilla had disappeared and then what caused the Olympian’s death, authorities have ruled it a simple, but tragic, traffic accident.
Asprilla, a 22-year-old who’d played for Colombia in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, was found dead by the side of a road on Wednesday. The sketchy nature of the area touched off speculation of foul play, but both cops and coroners say that’s not the case.
“It is confirmed that the cause of death of the young Leidy Johanna Asprilla was the product of a traffic accident, corroborated with the opinion of Medicine Legal, where it is observed that the body does not show signs of violence,” Colonel Javier Navarro, Police Commandant in the Valle del Cauca, according to Semana.com.
Asprilla left home Sunday to pick up a teammate for practice but never arrived. Her family reported her missing and first assumed she had been kidnapped.
Police eventually found her body near her motorcycle in a ditch off a road that leads from El Cerrito to Rozo in Valle del Cauca. She was reportedly wearing a helmet, and police also found a backpack with her belongings and a cap of her club team, Orsomarso SC, near the body.
Colombian paper El Espectador reported there was speculation that Asprilla was killed in a hit-and-run. The search party member who found Asprilla’s body told El Tiempo that he wasn’t convinced it was an accident and suggested it could’ve been foul play.
“The truth is that the motorcycle, as such, was in an almost perfect state. It had no effect on any of its parts or in the front of the bike’s drain. It had the mirrors on,” the man told El Tiempo, adding that the area is notoriously dangerous.
“I know the road, the road is very dangerous, people have been found dead due to robberies. I was even the victim of a theft, they even gagged me.”
But after the results of an autopsy, the authorities are saying the only thing sinister about Asprilla’s death was the road.
“The findings of the necropsy are related to a trauma at the level of the lower extremities and trauma at the level of the spine,” said national director of Legal Medicine, Claudia Adriana del Pilar Garcia Fino, according to Semana. “The manner of death, with the information we have available and the necropsy findings is a violent death compatible with a traffic accident.”
Catherine Asprilla, a member of the player’s family, told El Espectador that she had no enemies and was “a girl with zero problems.” When asked how she’d remember the soccer star, she replied “As a very cheerful person, she always had a smile. Someone friendly, above all simple and helpful to others.”
The Colombian soccer league Asprilla played in expressed condolences in a statement according to ESPN, saying “we are deeply saddened by the death of our player. The 36 clubs that make up DiMayor [the league] and our president, Jorge Enrique Velez, unite at this moment of grief with family, friends and teammates.”