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A new report raises questions about the case of Marina Barrientos, the 32-year-old who died in the summer of 2023 after falling off a jet ski along the coast of El Palo in Malaga. Judicial expert Miryam Moya, hired by the family of the deceased to help in the investigation, has examined the evidence in the case file and her conclusions contradict the official version.
The investigation into the incident, led by the Guardia Civil, is still open at the court in Malaga with only one person under investigation: the driver of the jet ski on which Marina was riding, a blue Yamaha, who tested positive for cocaine and also for alcohol, where he registered a rate of 0.10 milligrams per litre of exhaled air (the maximum on the road is 0.25).
The main mystery of the case, which the official investigation has yet to explain, is how Marina died. She sustained extremely severe injuries to the vaginal area, so severe that initially, the sexual assault protocol was activated, although no evidence of such an assault was found. However, it remains unclear how she sustained these injuries.
The autopsy determined that the injuries had been caused by a "blunt object" with an edge or point that does not necessarily have to be sharp and that "was inserted with great force," causing tears in muscles and vessels, and fracturing the sacrum and coccyx bones.
The Guardia Civil tried in their investigation to find an explanation for the accident that would fit with the forensic examination and the witnesses' accounts. Based on their testimonies, the officers believe that Marina’s hat was blown off and, while trying to grab it, she lost her grip and fell into the sea.
Regarding the injuries, the investigators themselves admit they cannot reach a definitive conclusion, so they propose two hypotheses. The first is that Marina fell into the water very close to the jet ski's turbine just as the rider accelerated. The second is that she struck some part of the jet ski at the moment it made an upward motion - opposite to the direction of her fall - after bouncing on the surface of the sea.
Investigators took samples from the blue jet ski on which Marina was riding and carried out alcohol and drug tests on the driver, but did not analyse a green jet ski that was travelling at an unspecified distance from the blue one, despite both heading together to the dry dock at Puerto Niza, between Rincón de la Victoria and Vélez-Málaga..
On that second jet ski were two brothers with whom Marina and other acquaintances had spent the afternoon - it was 16 July and the Virgen del Carmen celebrations - on a boat off the beaches of Malaga. The two occupants of the green jet ski hardly knew the young woman, but they did have friends in common.
The rider of the green jet ski told the Guardia Civil that he was travelling at 40-50 kilometres per hour and that he was in front of the one on which Marina was travelling, which he stated was travelling at a slower speed.
The new report by the court expert hired by the family does not dispute the mechanism of the fall (that she lost support when trying to catch the cap that flew off), but categorically rejects that the injuries suffered by the young woman were caused by the water expelled by the turbine or by hitting any part of the jet ski she was riding. In her opinion, such trauma, given the severity of the injuries, would have left traces of blood or DNA on the casing of the jet ski.
The court expert, who carried out a 3D reconstruction of the accident using various simulation and measurement tools, concludes that the fatal injuries suffered by Marina Barrientos were caused "by a direct impact with the other jet ski (the green one), the only blunt object of sufficient mass and speed present at the scene". She added, "Any other hypothesis, including the water jet hypothesis, is untenable under the principles of physics, biomechanics and the available forensic evidence."
"The nature of the injuries observed - fractures to the coccyx and sacrum, together with a complete and deep tear to the perineal region - indicates a blunt and focused force that far exceeds the damage capacity of a water jet, as I have found both physically and mathematically," she said in her report. She said that the structure of the vehicle's bow, on the other hand, "is compatible with the type of penetrating and tearing injuries described in the official autopsy report".
The expert is critical of the police investigation as it is based solely on witness statements: "There was no thorough collection of forensic evidence on the other jet ski; no DNA tests or blood tests were carried out on the surfaces of the vehicle, which could have revealed contact with Marina. Nor were alcohol or drug tests conducted on the driver of that second vehicle. This failure to collect key evidence represents a gap in the forensic analysis and limits the ability to physically corroborate the impact."
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