Drest becomes the third American tourist to die in Belize in tragic circumstances in less than a month.
The second was Julia Minard who was killed last Sunday in Indian Creek Village in the Toledo District. Tonight, her body remains at the KHMH morgue and will be flown to the United States tomorrow for burial, presumably in her family's hometown of Brooklyn Heights, New York.
A post mortem has confirmed that she died as a result of manual strangulation. We are informed that the fluid samples which will determine if she was sexually assaulted will most likely be tested in the United States. Those samples will be taken out of the country for further testing.
It's of note that Minard is the daughter of Lawrence Minard, a former managing editor of Forbes magazine and founding editor of Forbes Global Magazine who died of a heart attack 4 years ago when he and Julia were climbing Mount Ranier. Reports from the U.S. media say that Minard had been on a break from studying at the University of Colorado, and was studying Spanish in Guatemala.
