A Mexican male being held by Sinaloa police over the assault of a Canadian woman in a Mazatlan hotel has been denied bail after admitting responsibility for the attack.
Jose Ramon Acosta Quintero, 28, was arrested on Friday as prime suspect in the beating that left Sheila Nabb, 37, with almost every bone in her face broken.
Acosta was charged with attempted murder at a court hearing on Monday. He faces up to 14 years in prison if convicted.
Nabb was on vacation with husband Andrew at the five-star Hotel Riu in Mazatlan’s Punta Cerritos when the attack happened last weekend. She was discovered in the early hours of January 20, lying naked in a pool of blood in a hotel elevator.
Nabb’s husband was questioned and then released by police immediately after the incident. Security camera footage from the elevator showed the aggressor was a man in his twenties, later identified as Acosta. He was arrested after being identified through a blood sample.
Presented before the press on Saturday, Acosta admitted to the attack. He said he was drunk and high on cocaine when he encountered Nabb, naked, in the hotel elevator.
He had spent the day drinking heavily with a Canadian friend. After running out of beer, they went to the hotel’s 24-hour bar that provides free drinks to guests. The hotel maintains that access was limited to guests and staff, but Acosta said he simply entered via the beachside entrance where security was lax.He said he “was very, very drunk,” having consumed 19 alcoholic beverages and a line of cocaine when Nabb entered the elevator he was in. Acosta said they chatted normally but then argued when he tried to stop her leaving the elevator.
The suspect said he put his hand on the door because “I wanted to keep talking to her. She got afraid when I wouldn’t let her out. She started yelling, ‘He won't let me out.’”
Acosta panicked. “I got afraid also because she’s an American, or she’s a North American and I’m a Mexican and I wasn’t supposed to be in the hotel,” he said. “And she was naked, so I covered her mouth and said ‘Please don’t yell. I’m going to go home.’”
To silence Nabb, Acosta admitted, “I hit her four or five times in the face with my fist, and then I left.” Acosta addressed the media in Spanish and then repeated his story in English.
“I’m so sorry, I apologize and I’m sorry and I hope she recovers because I’ve seen the papers and her face was bad,” he added.
According to the state attorney general, Acosta was investigated in 2008 for rape. There is no evidence that Nabb was sexually assaulted. It is unclear why she entered the elevator naked.
Nabb awoke from a medically induced coma last Tuesday. Doctors initially said she would have to remain in Mexico for three or four weeks but on Friday she was transferred via air ambulance to the Foothills Medical Centre in her home town of Calgary.
The authorities are still trying to track down Acosta’s Canadian friend and his mother. State police say both have fled Mazatlan.