Good evening everyone. Specifically joined the website because of my interest in this case (hometown Vancouver). My background is specifically in the areas of international security, as well as critical infrastructure protection. Would love to be able to add my two cents in when I can.
Unfortunately this thread has moved fast, so I am unable to remember what I wanted to debate originally.
However, have we considered body dynamics of transporting the deceased? Dead weight, even of a smaller individual is immensely difficult to handle. From previous pictures, we can see that access to the water tank was likely from the aluminum ladder. I would argue that carrying a body would require above average strength and coordination. I would even go so far to argue one of two things from my experience: Elisa was alive or more than one person was involved in the disposal.
For those who have done military/firemen carries, you can recall that it's difficult, but remains doable because the person is reacting to you. With a dead body, there is no cooperation, and even light weights are exponentially harder to deal with.
Love to hear some feedback on this.
It is possible, I think. Someone posted about the body of a woman being found in a water tank in another case. But that's one case of a whole body being hefted up a ladder and into a tank.
I believe it is very hard to do. Not impossible, but improbable for most people.
Just watched the elevator video and it's just weird. Has her family released what they think about it? Is this normal behavior for her? I almost think she is drugged or drunk with her hand movements? Very, very strange. Was the elevator door just opening at the end or was it going to the different levels that she pushed? And why would anyone push all the floors on an elevator?
BBM. Maybe they would if they are psychotic and don't know what they are doing?
As a Psychiatric Nurse with extensive experience I will give you my two cents worth.
IMHO her behaviour is that of someone experiencing psychosis.
1. The "holiday" alone with no fixed plans
2. History of depression - more severe mental illnesses like Schizophrenia can often first present as depression. The stress of school could have brought this on.
3. Her behaviour in the elevator looks to me like someone experiencing paranoid ideation and possibly command hallucinations (voices telling her to do something like press all the buttons). The hiding and peeking out the door is a response to the paranoid thoughts that "someone is out to get her"
4. The wild gesticulating in the corridor to seemingly nobody is a response to internal stimuli - (voices in her head).
5. She probably hid in the water tank to escape her perceived threat. People experiencing psychosis do not make rational plans.
Thanks. I'm certainly no mental health expert but I've observed people with schizophrenia or mental health issues for most of my life. I'm also just a people observer in general but anything different catches my interest. Looked like psychosis to me, pretty much immediately.
I can't believe this was any kind of accident or suicide. Some of the articles said she was found nude at the bottom of the water tank. If no clothes were found next to the tank, I don't believe she walked to the roof naked! I also don't believe she climbed the ladder to the water tank and jumped in. The alarm would have gone off and the door to the roof was locked. Could she have been grabbed while she was in the hall shower room taking a shower? The one person said he heard a lot of noise on the floor above him the night she went missing. Also, the flooding could have been from the water being left on. But how would a predator get a naked girl from the 4th floor shower to the roof and wouldn't her clothes and bath supplies be left behind in the shower room? I think someone grabbed her somewhere in the hotel, raped and killed her, and disposed of her body in the water tank--probably a hotel employee who had a key to the roof and knew how to turn off the alarm. But why did no one see her being taken to the roof, and it would have probably taken 2 people to get her into the water tank unless the one was so high on drugs as to have super strength. Maybe someone drugged the girl too. As for the elevator video, I don't know what she was doing but I have seen oriental and Philippine woman talk with their hands in an animated way in everyday conversation and also scoot around quickly in a jerky way different from how most American woman would walk. An example is the Philippine lady who does my hair. She has manerisms similar to what Ellisa was showing as far as the hand gestures and the scooting around quickly. It is possible that Elisa's body was blocking the water and creating the low water pressure. I can imagine how horrified people would feel upon finding that they drank and brushed their teeth and washed with water from the tank Elisa was floating in (or sinking in). I really don't think she went up to the roof in a manic state and did this to herself. I hope the police investigators can unravel what happened before it happens to another young woman.
Here's some articles and stats on accidents, suicides and schizophrenia (average age for onset of women is 25, BTW):
Patients with schizophrenia suffer mortality rates estimated to be twice that of the general population and have a foreshortened life expectancy. Nearly one-third of the excess mortality in schizophrenia is attributable to the significantly higher risk of suicide, with an additional 12% due to accidental death.
http://www.primarypsychiatry.com/aspx/articledetail.aspx?articleid=1517
People with the condition have a 50 times higher risk of attempting suicide than the general population; the risk of suicide is very serious in people with schizophrenia. Suicide is the number one cause of premature death among people with schizophrenia, with an estimated 10 percent to 13 percent killing themselves and approximately 40% attempting suicide at least once (and as much as 60% of males attempting suicide). The extreme depression and psychoses that can result due to lack of treatment are the usual causes. These suicides rates can be compared to the general population, which is somewhere around 0.01%.
http://www.schizophrenia.com/szfacts.htm
Deaths due to Suicide Map 482, some of which will be due to schizophrenia, are counted separately. There is also an increased risk of Accidental death Map 474.
http://www.worldmapper.org/display_extra.php?selected=441
Here's a link to an video presentation at a conference on suicide and accidental deaths in first episode schizophrenia:
http://vimeo.com/channels/iepa2012/55528614
What about her lack of clothes? I found a lot of anecdotal evidence that taking one's clothes off is a byproduct of psychosis or mania:
And there's this:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGiR2TmeNYc"]Kony 2012 -- Jason Russell's Naked Meltdown - YouTube[/ame]
So, I think that's why LE suggests suicide or accident as possibilities.
But just because it is a possibility doesn't mean that's all they are looking at. Obviously, the difficulty of getting up on that roof is an issue. So is her lack of clothes unless they found them in her room or nearby.
As you can tell, I am 100% convinced that Elisa suffered a psychotic episode. But people in such states are very vulnerable to predators and to crime in general:
They are more likely than other women to be victims of crime, particularly assault and rape, which also take a terrible toll on body and mind.
http://www.michaelbfriedman.com/mbf/images/stories/VULNERABILITY_OF_MI_Women.pdf
Individuals with severe psychiatric disorders who were not taking medication were found to be 2.7 times more likely to be the victim of a violent crime (assault, rape, or mugging) than the general population.http://mentalillnesspolicy.org/consequences/victimization.html
More than one quarter of persons with SMI had been victims of a violent crime in the past year, a rate more than 11 times higher than the general population rates even after controlling for demographic differences between the 2 samples (
P<.001). The annual incidence of violent crime in the SMI sample (168.2 incidents per 1000 persons) is more than 4 times higher than the general population rates (39.9 incidents per 1000 persons) (
P<.001). Depending on the type of violent crime (rape/sexual assault, robbery, assault, and their subcategories), prevalence was 6 to 23 times greater among persons with SMI than among the general population.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1389236/
Women with mental illness are significantly more likely to be
victims of violent crime than other women.
http://consensusproject.org/downloads/vaw-brief.pdf
Whatever happened, I think it is clear that Elisa was a very vulnerable, young person at the time she died and I hope LE can figure out what happened. But the fact that they are looking at certain possibilities doesn't rule out that they are looking at other possibilities. I'm confused about the anger that LE is being broad in its investigation.
