Surprise witness testimony raises femicide suspicion

ANKARA

A surprise witness statement has led to the change of the course of a case involving the death of a young woman who lost her life under suspicious circumstances after falling from the fifth floor of a hotel in Ankara.

Gamze Açar, a 17-year-old high school student who went to a hotel in the city’s Kızılcahamam district on Nov. 7, was found dead on the ground in front of the hotel building in the early hours of the next day.

While the case in an Ankara court in which the five accused people are on trial continues, the statement of Özlem E., the hotel’s public relations officer, has increased the suspicion of femicide.

Noting that she heard three screams at around 8 a.m., the hotel attendant said she looked down from the window but went inside because she could not see anyone.

“Then I heard the fourth scream, which was the loudest one, and it sounded like it was shrieking. Just after this moment, I heard a popping sound,” she said, adding that she saw a woman lying on the floor when she looked down from the window.

The hotel attendant later said she heard two male voices, one of them talking to the other about “throwing the girl down and the cops might come to get them,” and the other one replying, “Don’t be silly, son. Mr. Gökbay will save us; we won’t get harmed. She came yesterday anyway; nobody knows what happened in the room.”

Stressing that she received threats not to testify at the court due to the incident, she said: “I said at Kızılcahamam police station that hotel manager Mr. Gökbay threatened me, but I do not know whether any action was taken or not.”

Meanwhile, a toxicology report from the Istanbul Forensic Medicine Report said there was no trace of drugs in Açar’s blood, contrary to what the defendants claimed.