Relatives of two Saudi Arabian sisters found floating in a New York City river, bound together with duct tape, have rejected suggestions that the pair committed suicide.
Tala Farea, 16, and her 22-year-old sister Rotana were discovered in the Hudson River a week ago, on October 24.
The pair were facing each other, fully clothed in the water, and bound together with duct tape.
Police said their bodies bore no signs of trauma, which suggested they had not jumped off the nearby George Washington bridge. But they are still trying to work out how they died.
The pair, born in Jeddah, were living until the summer in Fairfax, Virginia.
Shortly before their deaths, they had applied for asylum in the US, their mother said.
She told detectives, according to the New York Post, that the day before their bodies were discovered, she received a phone call from the Saudi Arabian embassy informing her that the family’s residency in the US was in jeopardy because the two had applied for immigration asylum.
She said that she had not seen her daughters since December 2017, when she reported them missing to police in Fairfax.
Virginia police found them soon after, but rather than return home they went to live in a local shelter, and police refused to tell them where it was, The New York Post reported.
Tala was reported missing again by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in August, but the English-language ArabNews.com, citing unnamed family members, reported that the mother called off the search when it was discovered the teenager was visiting her older sister at an unspecified college in New York.
The Saudi Arabian consulate in New York issued a statement confirming that the sisters were both Saudi Arabian citizens, and saying they were students, “accompanying their brother in Washington.”
New York police are treating their death as suicide, the NYPD told The Telegraph, but stressed that the investigation was still in its early stages.
“We do not know that a crime took place,” said Dermot Shea, the chief of detectives. He told The New York Times: “We have a terrible tragedy for sure."
However, a relative told Saudi newspaper Arab News that there had not been any family trouble, and dismissed reports they may had taken their own lives.
“They were a democratic family, they never had any issues and the eldest was sent to college in New York City with her family’s blessing,” said the family member.