Deaths of 3 Americans in Mexico City Airbnb Attributed to Carbon Monoxide Poisoning by Authorities

Kandace Florence texted her boyfriend in the early hours of October 30. “I’m really in pain and walking around in the apartment.” “I’m shaking.”

The couple are thousands of miles apart, with 28-year-old Florence staying in an Airbnb in Mexico City with two friends, Jordan Marshall and Courtez Hall. The trio will be found dead hours after the scary messages were sent to Victor Day. On Thursday, the deaths of the tourists were attributed to carbon monoxide poisoningaccording to a post-mortem analysis obtained by Related press.

According to local police, security guards at the apartment complex where the Americans were staying in the La Rosita neighborhood reported that in one apartment there was a “strong smell of gas”. A spokesman for the attorney general’s office told ABC News that investigators discovered a malfunction in the apartment’s gas boiler, which could release a lethal amount of colorless, odorless gas. The spokesman added that the faulty boiler could have been triggered by one of the three people trying to take a shower.

An investigation into the deaths is still ongoing, with the oversight of US Embassy officials there.

Day, 30, has reassured himself that his girlfriend will be fine, even though the messages are flooding in. “I feel like I’ve been drugged,” Florence wrote to him, according to El Pais. “It’s like I’ve been on ecstasy, but I haven’t.”

Believe she took a risk when she went to celebrate el Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, Day reasoned that she would oversleep the effects of any drug in her system. He recalled to the Spanish-language newspaper that Florence later FaceTimed him.

“Obviously she was in a lot of pain,” he said.

He extended this last exchange to People on Thursday, told the magazine she was “apparently” vomiting. “She was crying,” Day recalls. “I mean her whole face was wet, crying or vomiting or maybe she splashed water in her face.”

The call, according to Day, began shortly before 5 a.m. his time, and he fell asleep shortly after picking up the crashed Florence. He woke up about 10 minutes later to find the screen “black as ink”, “as if she put the phone down or the phone dropped”.

“But I could hear something going on in the background and I brought the phone to my ear, and it looked like she was vomiting or gasping for breath, or both,” Day said. Sure enough that Florence would be fine in the morning, he went back to sleep.

“For me, it’s what eats me,” he said.

When Florence didn’t reply to his text the next morning, it finally “clicked” for Day, and he contacted the short-term rental landlord, who said and told her that ” something is very wrong.”

The owner has agreed to send security into the apartment to check on his guests. When she returned to Day to tell him that Florence, Marshall, and Hall had been found “unresponsive without vital signs”, it wasn’t really to him. “I refuse to believe they are dead,” he said.

Florence, an entrepreneur who founded an affirmative candle-making company called Glo Through It, will turn 29 on Thursday. “She’s a dreamer, ‘dreamer’ means she wants to make a difference in the lives of others,” says her mother, Freida Florence. WAVY earlier this week.

“She’s just a beautiful soul,” Day said CNN. “She is a ray of light. She is very friendly, a perfect human being. That’s what hurts me the most.”

Marshall, 28, is an old friend of Florence in Virginia Beach. The two graduated from Kellam High School together in 2011, and remained close, even as Marshall moved to New Orleans to begin his teaching career.

“He was a ray of light, and anyone who came in contact with him would never forget him. We’ve received so much love and support from people from all over,” Marshall’s mother, who went to Mexico City to identify her son’s body, told CNN. “Jordan is very intelligent and eager to learn. He enjoys immersing himself in different cultures. He is very passionate about his students and is a very passionate educator.”

Marshall taught in New Orleans with 33-year-old Hall. “My son was a happy kid,” recalls Ceola Hall, his mother WDSU. “He loves me, he loves his family. He likes to make people laugh. “

Airbnb, calling the deaths a “terrible tragedy,” said in a statement that “its priority right now is to support those affected as authorities investigate what happened.” .”

The trio’s bodies are expected to be repatriated to their families in the US in the coming days.