What happened to Liz Hamel?
A local 18-year-old was found unconscious after plunging from a California university dorm room. She died days later.
Was it an accident? Or something more sinister?
Revelations were announced by private investigators Wednesday night. Could it lead to closure for her family?
Liz Hamel seemed to have the promise of a bright future when she graduated from Bellevue High School in 2024. But less than a year later, she died under mysterious circumstances, and her family wants to know why.
No one has been able to find the last person with whom she was seen.
“I’ve said this a number of times, that she was kind and everything,” Alain Hamel said, his voice breaking. “A second, please. ”
Hamel still struggles to talk about his daughter, 18-year-old Elizabeth, ‘Liz,’ he called her.
“Yeah, that she was kind,” he said. “I really appreciated that.”
The last time Liz was seen alive was on Valentine’s Day. She and friends, students at the University of California Santa Barbara, were celebrating at a local restaurant. Just after 10 p.m. that night, Liz left with a young man her friends did not know.
Less than a half hour later, she had fallen several feet from a breezeway on campus.
“Third-story breezeway that then landed on concrete,” explained her father.
Another student called 911.
“The first responders came,” Hamel said. “They found that by the time they arrived, she was in cardiac arrest due to an obstructed airway and, of course, due to the trauma of the fall.”
She lived six agonizing days before she died. The man she was last seen with hasn’t been seen since.
So, Hamel held a news conference in Santa Barbara to do what he says the police did not: release the last known photographs of the young man to be with his vibrant young daughter.
“He is the last person that we know of that had contact with Liz,” he said. “And just if he has information with respect to her last moments, that could be useful.”
Hamel’s heart is broken over his daughter’s death, and he and his wife want any help they can get to find this young man.
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