Thousands of people celebrated the life of an American college student who was detained in North Korea for over a year and died shortly after being returned to Ohio.
Otto Warmbier was in a coma when he was released, and died less than a week after returning home.
Friends like David Weinrich still can't believe he's gone.
"He was great. I don't think you can find words to really describe him. He was amazing. He was nice to everybody. He'd come up to anybody and talk to them no matter who you were. Always had a smile on his face. Had people laughing. He was athletic, smart. He was such a great, amazing person."
Warmbier's brother, sister and friends all spoke at a public funeral Thursday morning at Wyoming High School.
As pallbearers carried Warmbier’s casket out to the hearse, people outside the school stood in silence. His classmates hugged and cried. Many of them lined the street as the procession pulled out.
The U.S. diplomat who traveled to North Korea to secure Warmbier’s release, Joseph Yun, was at the funeral and so was Ohio Senator Rob Portman who had harsh words for the country that detained him.
“North Korea needs to be held accountable for what happened to Otto Warmbier," Portman says. "They have shown they not only don’t have regard for the rule of law, the Geneva convention, the basic freedoms that we enjoy. But they’ve shown through their treatment of Otto a disregard for basic human rights for human dignity.”
The senator says the next step is tightening sanctions against North Korea.
A coroner is trying to determine Warmbier's cause of death. Hamilton County Cororner Dr. Lakshmi Sammarco said in a news release her office received and examined Warmbier's body but the family objected to an autopsy and the coroner only performed an external examination.
Relatives were told the 22-year-old University of Virginia student had been in a coma since shortly after he was sentenced for allegedly trying to steal a North Korean propaganda banner in March, 2016.
He died Monday at University of Cincinnati Medical Center.
