A fellow American Airlines flight attendant talks about the disappearance of Colombia
The colleague of an American Airlines flight attendant who went missing in Colombia has been left “heartbroken” by her disappearance – but is still holding on to hope that she is still alive.
“I want to believe that he’s alive, and I want to continue to believe that he’s alive, but every day you wake up not knowing anything and it makes the days go by slower,” Ernesto Carranza told CBS News on Thursday.
Eric Fernando Gutierrez Molina, who is based in Dallas-Fort Worth, failed to make it to the Medellin-Miami flight he was supposed to work on Sunday morning – hours after leaving the city with his colleagues, and officials fear he may have been drugged.
Carranza’s worries intensified when he couldn’t get a hold of his 32-year-old lover that morning – despite having a job and his cell phone – and noticed strange cell phone rings coming from two places.
“Both of these places were not close to where he was supposed to sleep,” he said.
The cell phone ping is from an Airbnb in Medellín’s El Poblado neighborhood – about 12 kilometers from the city’s airport.
Carranza spoke to his partner before he left with his partner and told him, “have a good night, be safe, I love you.”
“And he just texted, ‘okay, I love you, I’m going out to hang out with my crew,'” she told NBC5.
She and her partner met two men at a club and decided to “take the party somewhere else,” her friend Sharom Gil told Colombian outlet Telemedellin.
“I’ve lost a part of me. He’s the happiest person ever. We’ve lost a lot right now,” he explained his grief.
Gil said that the messages are no longer received on his phone even though he knows the place.
Medellin authorities say some former AA employees have a history of theft using the incapacitating drug scopolamine, also known as Devil’s breath.
Tourists in bars and nightclubs in major Colombian cities consumed an odorless and odorless drug mixed in drinks before the attack, the US Embassy in Colombia warned.
“If ingested or exposed, scopolamine can render the victim unconscious for 24 hours or more,” the ambassador said.
This makes it easier for criminals to attack.
Officials have identified the vehicles and phones used by the suspects.
Missing persons reports have been filed with Colombian and American authorities – and the flight attendant’s father has also traveled to Colombia.
The FBI may also contact the embassy and local law enforcement, but former agent Ken Gray cautioned that he would not lead the investigation.
“The FBI cannot conduct an investigation on its own inside a country. Instead, it works with the police in that country, the national police usually in that country,” he said.
