No autopsy for US student detained by N Korea

An Ohio coroner, abiding by family wishes, has performed an external examination instead of a full autopsy on the body of the US student who was held prisoner in North Korea for 17 months and sent home in a coma, the agency said on Tuesday. The Hamilton County Coroner's Office was still conferring on Tuesday with doctors at a Cincinnati hospital who were treating Otto Warmbier, 22, before reaching any conclusions about his death a day earlier, investigator Daryl Zornes said.

Investigators also were continuing to review radiological images and awaiting additional medical records requested by the coroner, Zornes told Reuters.

He declined to estimate how long it would take for the coroner's office to complete its inquiry. Preliminary autopsy findings had been expected later on Tuesday or on Wednesday.

There was no immediate word from the family about why relatives declined an autopsy, which may have shed more light on the cause of the neurological injuries that left him in a coma.

Warmbier's death came just days after he was released by the North Korean government and returned to the United States suffering from what US doctors described as extensive brain damage.

Warmbier, an Ohio native and student at the University of Virginia, was arrested in North Korea in January 2016 while visiting as a tourist. He was sentenced two months later to 15 years of hard labor for trying to steal an item bearing a propaganda slogan from his hotel in North Korea's capital, Pyongyang, the nation's state media said.

Warmbier's death has only heightened US-North Korean tensions aggravated by dozens of North Korean missile launches and two nuclear bomb tests since last year in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions. The North Korean government has vowed to develop a nuclear-tipped intercontinental missile capable of hitting the US mainland.

Warmbier's family has not specified how he slipped from a comatose state to death, but said in a statement on Monday that the "awful torturous mistreatment" he endured while in captivity meant "no other outcome was possible."