The families of two Oklahoma girls who claim they were drugged with fentanyl at a Cancun resort slammed Mexican authorities for accusing them of making up the story.
Stephanie Snider, the mother of the boyfriend of Zara Hull, who claimed she was targeted alongside her friend Kaylie Pitze, took to Facebook to dispel allegations the girls were merely too drunk.
‘They also are saying that the girls both had clean toxicology reports – there was not even a toxicology report done on Zara at the hospital in Mexico,’ she wrote.
‘They also claimed to have reached out to the families. We were not contacted. They even said it didn’t happen in Cancun. They were staying in Cancun, I can assure you. They went on to say other things that are also false.’
After both girls were hospitalized following their fainting-episode at the resort, Snider added that they are both now ‘struggling with emotional issues’ and ‘depression’ as they recover back home.
Snider posted her update two weeks after Hull and Pitzke made headlines with their claims that they were drugged with fentanyl-laced drinks while on vacation with their boyfriends.
Disturbing images showed them slumped over a poolside bar after consuming the drinks, and their families said they were left in wheelchairs with no memory of what happened to them.
But shortly after, the head of the State Attorney General’s office (FGE), Raciel López Salazar, said an investigation found they were never spiked.
Salazar claimed the girls’ drug tests came back clean and that the case has been ‘exaggerated and classifies it as simple alcohol consumption’.
‘There was no drug dealing here in Quintana Roo with fentanyl,’ he said, adding that they were staying at a hotel in Isla Mujeres, not Cancun.
This development was scathed by Snider in her Facebook post, who said they ‘were staying in Cancun, I can assure you.’
‘I am not here to have this argument. In fact, it doesn’t surprise me at all that they are trying to dismiss this situation. I’m sure they do NOT want our truth to come out because it would hurt them and their tourism industry,’ she continued.
‘Now these girls are dealing with the aftermath of what happened to them while staying there. They are home and physically safe, but their lives feel very different.
‘Both girls are struggling with emotional issues from not being able to remember what happened to them but yet reaping the side effects.
‘They’re still have some issues with mental clarity and physical stamina. Depression has become an issue as one would expect, but they have such strong support from family and friends and are dealing with these issues as they come.
‘Even Jake (Zara’s boyfriend) is still struggling with similar issues just because he was trying his best to protect Zara in a different country while overcoming the uncertainty he was facing.’
Hull and Pitze were on a dream vacation with their boyfriends when the horror unfolded, and previously described the moment she and Pitze passed out in front of her terrified boyfriend Jake.
‘We both got water and within two minutes, Jake had turned around and we both hit the bar, heads down at the same time,’ Hull said.
Hull said she experienced convulsions before passing out and becoming ‘basically paralyzed.’
Snider rushed her to the hospital and remained by her side as staff reportedly demanded thousands of dollars for treatment.
‘They had increased the money they wanted. The baseline was $10,000 for them to even look at me,’ Hull said.
‘They were holding me captive. We’re college students; we don’t have the money they’re asking for.’
Meanwhile, she suffered from seizures throughout the night, and the doctors intubated her.
Amid the chaos of their hospital stints, Snider said she believes they were spiked by people who wanted to harvest their organs or subject them to trafficking.
‘We believe they were planning to take her away to be trafficked or perhaps even to take her organs (which is what we were later told is a common thing that is done),’ Snider wrote in an emotional Facebook post.
Hull claimed hospital staff demanded even more money to release her, and the air ambulance to bring Hull back to the United States cost $26,000.
A day after ingesting the suspicious beverage, the group secured a private plane to fly them to Dallas.
In Snider’s most recent update, she said the girls are back home and are ‘physically safe’, but are still emotionally vulnerable following their ordeal.
‘The sad truth is that it is happening. Innocent victims are being drugged,’ she wrote. ‘Their families are being extorted for lots of money to get them out. More bills are piling up while the victims are receiving proper medical and emotional care while healing from these horrific acts of crime.
‘Families are in debt for tens of thousands of dollars from saving their loved ones.
‘I don’t have to name the resort. We don’t have to name the hospital. It’s multiple resorts that have done this to people. We are here to tell everyone IT IS NOT SAFE. Many go and return home just fine, but so many, like our kids, weren’t that fortunate. Some won’t return home at all.
‘Our story is real. It’s very real. We refuse to stoop to the level of these accusers and have this argument. We don’t have to. I have NOTHING to hide. Please be kind to our kids. They’ve been through hell & all they wanted was to keep you from going through it too.’