Deaths of 3 Americans in Mexico City Airbnb attributed to carbon monoxide poisoning by authorities

“I’m literally in pain and pacing around the apartment,” Kandace Florence emailed her boyfriend in the early hours of October 30. “I’m shaking.”

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

Security officers at the apartment complex where the Americans had stayed in the La Rosita neighborhood reported “an intense smell of gas” in one unit, according to local police. A spokesperson for the attorney general’s office said ABC News that investigators had found a fault in the apartment’s gas boiler, which could have released a lethal amount of colorless, odorless gas. The faulty boiler may have been activated by one of the three attempting to take a shower, the spokesperson added.

An investigation into the deaths is still ongoing, overseen by US Embassy officials at the scene.

Day, 30, had made sure his girlfriend would pull through, despite the text messages pouring in. “I feel like I’ve been drugged,” Florence wrote to her, according to El País. “Like I took ecstasy, but I didn’t.”

Believing she’d been dosed while she party Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, Day felt she would fall asleep from the effects of any drugs in her system. He reminded the Spanish-language newspaper that Florence then FaceTimed him.

“She was visibly in pain,” he said.

He developed this final exchange to People Thursday, telling the magazine that she “clearly” threw up. “She cried,” Day recalled. “I mean her whole face was wet, crying or vomiting or maybe she splashed water all over her face.”

The call, according to Day, started just before 5 a.m., and he dozed off shortly after picking up to see the distressed Florence. He woke up about 10 minutes later to see a “black” screen, “like she put the phone down or the phone fell.”

“But I could hear something happening in the background and I put the phone to my ear, and it sounded like vomiting or heaving, or both,” Day said. Sure that Florence would be fine tomorrow morning, he went back to sleep.

“For me, that’s what eats me away,” he said.

When Florence didn’t respond to her texts the next morning, it finally “clicked” for Day, and he contacted the short-term rental host, he said, telling her that “something really not okay”.

The host agreed to send security to the apartment to check on his guests. When she returned to Day to tell him that Florence, Marshall, and Hall had been found “unresponsive with no vital signs,” it didn’t seem real to her. “I refused to believe they were dead,” he said.

Florence, an entrepreneur who founded an affirmative candle-making company called Glo Through It, would have turned 29 on Thursday. “She was a dreamer, a ‘dreamer’, which means she wanted to make a difference in the lives of others,” said her mother, Freida Florence. CORRUGATED earlier this week.

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

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

“He was a shining ray of light, and everyone who came in contact with him has never forgotten him. We received so much love and support from people all over the world,” he told CNN. Marshall’s mother, who traveled to Mexico City to identify her son’s body.”Jordan was very intellectual and curious. He loved being immersed in different cultures. He was very passionate about his students and was a very passionate educator.”

Marshall had taught in New Orleans alongside the 33-year-old Hall. “My son was a happy child,” recalls Ceola Hall, his mother. WDSU. “He loved me, he loved his family. He loved making everyone laugh.

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

The bodies of the trio are expected to be repatriated to their families in the United States in the coming days.