AP Features, March 8th, 2007
An autopsy of an Italian man who died in a Mexican jail after being hauled away for drunkenness and public disorder showed he was not drunk but suffered a heart attack, his uncle said Thursday.
Simone Renda, 34, was detained March 1 after hotel employees at the beach resort of Playa del Carmen worried that he was not answering his phone or to knocks on his door entered his room, said his uncle, Silvio Valente.
Renda reacted confusedly and ran out half undressed, and police arrested him and took him to jail, where he was sentenced to 36 hours jail, said Valente, a lawyer in the southern Italian city of Lecce.
At the station Renda became ill and was visited by a doctor, who diagnosed the beginning of a heart attack. Nevertheless, he was put in a cell, his uncle said.
"He was sentenced to 36 hours, and he died his 46th hour there," Valente told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. He said that his son, also a lawyer, was in Mexico to handle the paperwork and bring back the body.
The autopsy showed no signs of alcohol or drugs, Valente said.
"Everybody loved him, he was a golden boy," Valente said of his nephew, who worked at a bank in Lecce and was in Mexico on vacation.
On Wednesday, Italy's Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema said he was "deeply struck by the man's death," and called on authorities in Mexico to "clarify all the circumstances of the grave incident, especially regarding the health conditions of Renda when he was arrested, and the need for adequate medical assistance."
Emilio Ramirez, an investigator with the attorney general's office for the state of Quintana Roo, where Playa del Carmen is located, said Thursday that Renda was jailed at the request of a woman "because he was disturbing the peace and was apparently drunk."
The office confirmed Thursday that the cause of death was a heart attack.
