In God We Trust
Otto Frederick Warmbier, 22, son of Fred and Cindy Warmbier of Wyoming, Ohio, died in a hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio, on June 19, 2017. He had been held prisoner in North Korea for 17 months and was returned to the United States on "humanitarian grounds" on June 13, 2017, just six days before he died.
Otto arrived back in the States in a coma and with extensive brain damage. Authorities said that Otto lapsed into a coma in March of 2016, shortly after being sentenced to 15 years hard labor in North Korea for allegedly stealing a propaganda poster from a hotel in Pyongyang--an offense that NK officials said was a "crime against the state".
Pyongyang spokesmen contended that Otto slipped into a coma after contracting botulism and after being given a sleeping pill. But American physicians who examined Warmbier in Cincinnati said there was no sign of botulism in his body. Otto's parents tell a different story than Pyongyang officials. They believe that their son was "brutalized and terrorized" by the North Korean government.
Otto Frederick Warmbier was born on December 12, 1994, in Cincinnati, Ohio, the eldest of three children born to Fred Allan and Cynthia Jane (Cindy Garber) Warmbier. He was reared in the Cincinnati area, where he attended Wyoming (Ohio) High School. He played on the school's soccer team. He was the class salutatorian when he graduated from high school in 2013. After high school Otto was admitted to the University of Virginia in the fall of 2013, where he had a double major in commerce and economics. He planned a career in financing. At the time of his arrest, he was a three-year student at UVA. He was scheduled to graduate with the Class of 2017, but he already had enough credits to graduate. He was an Echols Scholar, a program designed for students demonstrating extraordinary intellectual curiosity and self-motivation. He worked on the Student Council's Sustainability Committee and was involved with Hillel, a Jewish community organization. He was an exchange student at the London School of Economics and had traveled to several countries in his short lifetime.
Otto was a member of the Xi Chapter of Theta Chi fraternity, having joined that organization in the spring of 2014. Upon receiving news of Otto's death, a statement from Theta Chi's current president, Austin Simpson, and past president, Carter Levinson, read:
To many of us at UVA, Otto embodied the ideal student. He had his individual quirks that UVA loves, recognizes, and encourages. He was full of adventure and embodied the questioning spirit of forward progress that academics long for. He symbolized individualism, unabated by anything or anyone around him.
But in order to know who Otto truly was, we must lean on those that knew him. To us, Otto was a source of inspiration. He was a model for drive, energy, and compassion. He had the ability to put his nose to the grindstone and get things done. He represented the epitome of friendship. He had an ability to feel when his friends were in need, and he would give anything to offer them an assisting hand. What occurred to Otto can never be changed or explained. We cannot fathom what he went through, however we can learn from his life. We can all, in some way, be benefitted by being more like Otto.
Fraternity brother Billy Burgess spoke at a vigil held in Otto's memory at the University of Virginia about Otto’s special relationship with Martin Powell, an honorary Theta Chi brother living with cerebral palsy. Warmbier visited Powell frequently, brought him to UVA sporting events, and helped him to reconnect with the fraternity.
In 2016 Otto Warmbier was scheduled to participate in a 10-day tour of the Asian financial capitals of Hong Kong and Singapore. The tour was sponsored by the University of Virginia's McIntire School of Commerce. Prior to flying to Beijing to join the McIntire tour, Otto signed up to travel to North Korea with a Chinese tour company entitled Young Pioneer Tours. The company markets itself as providing "budget travel to destinations your mother would rather you stayed away from." Among the countries they offer tours to are North Korea, Afghanistan, lran, Chernobyl, Cuba, Turkmenistan, etc. Like most young Americans living in freedom in the USA, Otto Warmbier had no idea what dangers awaited him in communist North Korea. That country's leader by birth, Kim Jung Un, is a rash, brutal dictator whose people starve while he lives in luxury. North Korea has been declared a terrorist state by the United States government. In spite of the fact that officials in the United States and Canada warn against it, some 6,000 Westerners visit North Korea every year.
In January 2016 Otto was arrested for purportedly stealing a propaganda poster from a staff-only area of the Yanggakdo International Hotel in Pyongyang. The arrest was made at Pyongyang International Airport just before Warmbier's flight to Beijing was scheduled to depart. It was 20 days later before the North Korean government informed the public of the American's arrest. Since the United States has no diplomatic relations with North Korea, only a Swedish embassy representative was allowed to visit Warmbier.
Witness to Warmbier's arrest was Danny Gratton, a sales manager from Stone, Staffordshire, England. He met Otto Warmbier on the same Young Pioneer tour and was his roommate at the hotel in Pyongyang. In an interview with Josh Rogin, a reporter with the Washington Post, he said, “Otto was just a really great lad who fell into the most horrendous situation that no one could ever believe. It’s just something I think in the Western world we just can’t understand. We just can’t grasp the evilness behind that dictatorship.” Gratton was reportedly not interviewed by U.S. officials investigating Warmbier's imprisonment.
A one-day trial was held in March of 2016 and the guilty verdict of the North Korean court resulted in a sentence of 15 years hard labor for Warmbier. The North Korean premise was that Otto had orders from the Friendship United Methodist Church in Wyoming (Ohio) to steal the poster and bring it back to the States as a trophy in exchange for a used car worth $10,000. Other than glimpses of their son on television segments, the Warmbiers did not see Otto until he was returned to the States in June 2017.
U.S. State Department representative Joseph Yun played a key role in obtaining the release of Otto Warmbier on June 13, 2017, on "humanitarian grounds". Also working behind the scenes to push for his release were Long Island international defense lawyer (and University of Virginia alumnus) Michael Griffith and former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson.
Otto was finally returned to the States in a coma and died at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center in Cincinnati on June 19, 2017. His funeral was held on June 22 at Wyoming High School, with more than 2,500 mourners attending. He was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Glendale, Ohio. It was reported that students tied ribbons on every tree and pole along the three-mile route taken by the funeral procession from the high school to the cemetery.
Otto Warmbier is survived by his parents, Fred and Cindy Warmbier of Cincinnati, Ohio; brother, Austin W. Warmbier; sister, Greta Warmbier; maternal grandmother, Frieda Donn Garber; and girlfriend, Alex Vagonia (UVa Class of 2017). He was preceded in death by his maternal grandfather Charles Garber, great-grandparents Mr. and Mrs. Nathan Garber and Mr. and Mrs. Morris Donn.
In December of 2018, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ordered North Korea to pay more than $500 million to the Warmbier family. Otto's family filed the wrongful death lawsuit, claiming that North Korea was "legally and morally" responsible for their son's death. The compensation was for economic losses, medical expenses, pain and suffering, emotional suffering, and punitive damages. Further details about the lawsuit can be found in the court document: Warmbier v. Democratic People's Republic of North Korea, U.S.D.C. (D.D.C.) Case No. 1:18-cv-00977-BAH. In September of 2019, the United States sold a captured North Korean cargo ship for scrap to compensate the Warmbier family. Mr. and Mrs. Warmbier remain strong advocates for human rights and democracy.
The Warmbiers were interviewed by Fox News some three months after their son's death. Fred and Cindy Warmbier wanted their fellow countrymen to know that they consider North Korea a terrorist state. "North Korea is not a victim, they are terrorists. They purposefully and intentionally injured Otto."
The couple told Fox what they experienced upon seeing their son after his return to the States. As they boarded the plane to see Otto for the first time in over a year, they said they heard "inhuman" howling. They said that Otto was moaning and jerking violently, had a feeding tube coming out of his nose, and was blind and deaf. He was unable to communicate with them.
When he died Otto's parents requested no autopsy. Instead, the Hamilton County (Ohio) coroner conducted an external examination of Otto's body. He said that he saw no concrete signs of torture. He found at least ten "small scars" on Otto's body, as well as what appeared to be a tracheotomy scar to insert a breathing tube. The coroner ruled Otto Warmbier's cause of death as brain damage caused by lack of oxygen from an unknown head injury that happened more than a year before Otto's death.