The sister of Alexander Pantoja Bertot, the employee of the Electric Company of Santiago de Cuba whose disappearance prompted a large search operation over several days, confirmed this Monday on Facebook that her brother passed away from natural causes and that no one harmed him.
"I want to inform everyone that for our peace of mind, we have just learned that my brother passed away from natural causes, no one did anything wrong to him, it simply happened and that was his fate. God willed it this way," wrote Yaima Bertot in her post, where she also thanked those who participated in the search from the very beginning.
The message marks a significant shift from the statements that Yaima herself had made days earlier, when she openly suspected that "someone did something to him and took him somewhere else," and after the discovery of the body, she even called for "the full weight of the law" to be imposed on those responsible.
Alexander Pantoja, project specialist at the Electric Company, disappeared on September 10 while inspecting the power line that supplies the Gota Blanca reservoir, in a rural area between the municipalities of Palma Soriano and Contramaestre, in eastern Cuba.
His disappearance in that mountainous and hard-to-reach area triggered a large-scale search operation that involved more than 50 workers from the electrical sector, canine brigades, drones, rescuers, and police forces.
On Sunday, September 13, at around 12:15 p.m., a team of park rangers located the body in the area known as El Palmar, in the municipality of Contramaestre, about 1.5 km from the main road.
The circumstances of the discovery —the body was sitting on a stone and leaning against a tree— along with the fact that his sister stated he did not suffer from any known illnesses, raised doubts about what had happened.
Cuban authorities indicated that forensic experts were investigating the causes of death, awaiting the results of the autopsy, although an official statement with those conclusions has not yet been released.
It was precisely that uncertainty that kept the family and those following the case on social media on edge for days, until Yaima Bertot's post on Monday closed the chapter with a message of peace and acceptance.
"One million thanks once again to all, all those people who were there from the very first minute helping to find him; everyone was important and played a fundamental role. We are eternally grateful, and my brother is now at his eternal rest," concluded the sister of the deceased worker.
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