Police deny reports Mongolian woman was murdered
City police said a Mongolian woman found dead in Shanghai on December 29 was not murdered, despite a number of Mongolian news websites, including mminfo.mn and times.mn, reporting earlier this month that she had been "killed."
The 21-year-old woman, Boldbaatar Maralmma, was found face down in the corner of a second-floor platform at a residential complex in Xuhui District about 8am, police said in a statement on Wednesday.
Residents on the third floor had spotted her and called security guards, who called the police.
The woman was confirmed dead at the scene, police said.
Her clothing was not torn and there were no wounds caused by others on her body, forensic experts found.
"She had multiple bone fractures which are characteristic of severe injuries resulting from falling from a high place," police said in the statement.
"There was a shallow scratch wound on her left wrist formed by sharp objects, but it could have been caused by herself."
It was estimated she had been dead for three days.
Police found she had a blood alcohol level of 1.37mg/ml. No drugs were detected.
The woman had been a student at the Antai College of Economics and Management of Shanghai Jiao Tong University from September 2016 to July 2017, when she terminated her studies and left the university.
She arrived back in Shanghai on November 29, traveling from Mongolia and passing through Beijing, police said.
In Shanghai, she checked in at a hotel in Xuhui District with her boyfriend, a 37-year-old Shanghai man surnamed Rao.
The two traveled to Thailand on December 14 and returned to the same hotel on December 21, with Rao going back to his apartment the next day.
Rao returned to the hotel twice between December 23 and 25 to meet her, police said.
They said the woman had gone for a drink alone on the night of December 25 and was seen back at the hotel at 1am on the 26th.
She took a taxi from the hotel to the residential complex where Rao lives about 6am, according to police.
Guards at the complex recalled she demanded they open the security gate at Rao's building, but they refused.
She later managed to enter the building when some residents left, according to witnesses and surveillance footage, but after that she disappeared.
Rao is said to have told police he and his girlfriend had argued about their relationship, and she "gave him two slaps on the face" at his door that morning.
"There were no suspicious traces at Rao's apartment or the scene, and judging from the structure of the building, it was not likely that she fell from Rao's apartment," the police statement said.
Rao tried to contact her by phone between December 26 and 28 several times and also went to the hotel to look for her but was unsuccessful, police said.
Preliminary findings indicated the woman died of "shock from wounds" resulting from falling from a high place.
Shanghai Public Security Bureau informed the Mongolian Embassy in China on January 2 of the woman's death and accompanied her parents and an embassy official to view her body at Longhua Funeral Parlor. They were also shown where her body had been found.
Her parents signed the death report on Wednesday and didn't raise any objections as to the cause of death, police added.