University of California grad dies after lethal mix of alcohol, eye drops

A recent graduate of the University of California Law School was found dead last weekend in the Nápoles neighborhood of Mexico City after ingesting a mixture of alcohol and cyclopentolate, a drug commonly used in eye drops, in what police say could have been an attempted robbery.

Mexico City native Pablo González Kúsulas had returned home three weeks ago after finishing a degree in Berkeley with a specialty in energy law. His family says that on Friday night he and a friend went to Palmas Karaoke in Lomas de Chapultepec.

González left the bar in a car around 4:00am Saturday with unknown subjects, who later removed his body from the car and abandoned it around 4:50 in Nápoles.

An autopsy determined that the cause of death was a mixture of alcohol and cyclopentolate.

Mexico City police told the newspaper Milenio that the case has similarities to those involving criminal groups called goteras, which are made up of women who slip eye drops into their victims’ drinks with the intention of knocking them out and robbing them. However, sometimes the mixture can be deadly, as was the case with González.

But his family is not convinced about the cause of death. Rodrigo Gurza, a lawyer for the family, told Imagen Noticias that there is no clear evidence that González was a victim of the goteras.

“It’s not fair that the prosecutors . . . are getting in the way of the investigation by making false statements and affirming things that there is no proof of, because toxicology and pathology tests take longer than three days,” he said.

“They are defaming a dead person, a Mexican citizen who was killed because of the insecurity that exists in this country and the failure of the government of Mexico City to provide security and justice.”

Source: Milenio (sp), Excelsior (sp)

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