The drama of the Tobón Sánchez family has aroused messages of condolences and encouragement in memory of the two brothers who lost their lives in tragic episodes in Cali.
In April 2021, Jorge Felipe Tobón, athlete of the Colombian Hockey Team, was killed in a robbery on a hill; and on February 15, the death of his brother Julián Andrés occurred, when he was riding a motorcycle on the road to the south of Colombia,
(Read in context: Cali: Brother of athlete killed in robbery dies in accident)
On February 15, Julián Andrés Tobón, a biomedical and electromedical doctor, was traveling on a motorcycle along the highway between the capital of Valle del Cauca and Jamundí.
The professional, who was going to provide a service in an entity on the border between Valle and Cauca, had not used his car due to the congestion between the two cities.
But at the height of race 127, Julián Andrés lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a utility pole. His death was on the spot.
Photo taken by the Tobón Sánchez family on the way to Jamundí
Site where Julián Tobón fell on a motorcycle
The relatives of the young man, in the midst of his pain, received information that he had an accident through a hole.
Jorge Mario Tobón, Julián’s father, said “I invite the two Secretaries of Mobility and Infrastructure so that we can go to the site and show them the loopholes that are on that road, if they have not already covered them. They are washing their hands and deny the ineptitude and inefficiency of that mayor’s office”.
This pronouncement is due to the fact that the Cali District administration reported that the accident was not due to road damage.
The Secretary of Infrastructure, Néstor Martínez, expressed condolences for the pain suffered by the Tobón family. He assured that experts from the Ministry of Mobility detailed that in the section there is no road failure associated with the fall and death of the young man.
He said that the technicians reported that about a hundred meters around race 127, where Julián Tobón fell, there is no road damage.
According to that report, the motorcycle would have gone up to the berm and soft area. The rims have no signs of damage or bursting.
In a statement, the Tobón Sánchez say that on behalf of the family “a tour of the sector was carried out and, specifically, of the scene of the events, in which it can be evidenced, to verify the real state of the asphalt folder in a radius of 50 meters around, being fully evidenced in a video its real state”.
On April 18, 2021, Jorge Felipe Tobón, who was a player for the Colombia and Valle hockey team, died in a robbery on the hill. Four arrests have been reported for this crime.
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In a car accidentwhich would be due to a gap in the road from Cali to JamundíJulián Andrés Tobón Sánchez died on the spot when he was on his way to do some work.
In April of last year, he suffered from grief at the murder of Jorge Felipe Tobon Sanchez, player of the Colombian National Hockey Team. in a robbery on a hill in the capital of Valle del Cauca.
On the morning of Monday, February 14, Julian Andres Tobon Sanchez He left his home in Cali aboard a motorcycle.
His intention was to reach Puerto Tejada, in the north of Cauca, limits with Valle del Cauca. As a technologist in electromedicine, he had to attend to the maintenance of equipment in an institution in the area.
His father, Jorge Mario Tobon A retired Army sergeant, who is grieving over the death of two children, says that Julián Andrés never refused to provide a service because he said that the equipment had to be fully operational for diagnosis or instrument sterilization.
(Read in context: Family of an athlete murdered on a hill in Cali went into exile
He decided that he would travel by motorcycle because if he used a car he would have inconveniences due to the high congestion in the road to Jamundi.
The professional lost control of the motorcycle and crashed into a pole. His death was on the spot.
His father assures that in his death there is negligence and corruption in a road that was built years ago and has been left halfway.
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How many times did you run late at night to repair the biomedical equipment, because it failed and its normal operation was required to save a life that required it?
Jorge Felipe Tobón, murdered in a robbery on the hill of Cali
“Our son, who in life, leaves us a beautiful grandson, nephew of just four years and an adorable companion, was not only a son, brother, friend, an exemplary professional, but also, he always committed himself to being a great citizen and a great person…”, says a message from the family.
He notes that Julián Andrés “managed to stand out in all areas of life, as a worthy representative of health, as a technologist in electromedicine. A professional devoted to saving lives… how many times did he run, late at night, to repair biomedical equipment, because they failed and their normal functioning was required to save a life that required it. Their actions and acts in the field of health are infinite”.
On April 18, 2021, the tragic death of Jorge Felipe Tobón, hockey player and coachwho went out early with his girlfriend to training for the closed close to your home in north of Cali.
A few minutes later, when they were just beginning the ascent through the back of Chipichape, they were met by some young men with sharp weapons.
They intimidated the couple who had no other belongings and told Tobón’s girlfriend to go downstairs to look for money. This would prevent sexual abuse, according to the complaints.
The athlete was subdued and tied up. In these circumstances he lost most of his clothing and suffered injuries that caused his death, when his girlfriend returned accompanied by other people to help him.
Four people have been arrested for the crime. Last July, the father announced that he had gone into exile.
“Today I ask, beg, exclaim and demand as a citizen within the legal parameters, the State at the national, departmental and local levels. That their actions of negligence do not continue to claim more lives and in this case due to the abandonment and corruption on the roads of our country, do not take more lives,” he wrote on social media Monday.
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The mystery surrounding the citizenship of U.S.-born Chinese Olympic team star Eileen Gu has deepened, with VOA learning that two Olympic websites scrubbed contradictory information about her status shortly after she won her first gold medal of the Beijing Winter Games.
The 18-year-old freestyle skier fueled speculation about her status during a post-victory news conference Tuesday when she declined to respond directly to several reporters’ questions about whether she remains a U.S. citizen. She had just won gold in the women’s freeski big air event.
The San Francisco native, who was born a U.S. citizen to a Chinese immigrant mother and an American father, switched her sporting allegiance from the U.S. to China in 2019, making the announcement on Instagram But the manner in which she made the switch has remained unclear.
Under Rule 41 of the Olympic Charter, Gu must be a Chinese national in order to compete for China. But for a person to successfully naturalize as a Chinese citizen, Article 8 of China’s Nationality Law says that person “shall not retain foreign nationality.”
U.S. authorities have not commented on whether Gu has renounced her U.S. citizenship, a decision they typically treat as a private matter.
Gold medalist Eileen Gu of China celebrates during the medal ceremony for the women’s freestyle skiing big air at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Feb. 8, 2022, in Beijing.
In recent days, the lack of clarity about Gu’s loyalties has been a hot topic for social media users in the U.S. and China, two global powers navigating an increasingly tense relationship.
Many of those commentators did not appear to have noticed that the website of the Beijing Organizing Committee of the Winter Games, Beijing2020.cn, had an English-language profile page for Gu with a biographical section containing the following sentence: “After her first World Cup win in Italy in 2019, she renounced her United States citizenship for Chinese citizenship in order to represent China at the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games.” British news site Independent first reported that information about her profile page on February 2.
The reference to Gu renouncing her U.S. citizenship remained on her profile page when VOA reviewed it on Wednesday, indicating that it had been online for at least a week.
Eileen Gu profile screenshot, Feb. 9, 2022.
When VOA reviewed the same page on Thursday, the sentence had been rewritten to say: “After her first World Cup win in Italy in 2019, she made the decision to compete for China.”
Eileen Gu profile screenshot, Feb. 10, 2022.
Also removed from the updated version of her profile was a quote that she gave to her Austrian sponsor Red Bull in December and that she has since repeated in various forms, including at Tuesday’s news conference: “When I’m in America, I’m American. When I’m in China, I’m Chinese.”
The Mandarin version of Gu’s profile on the Beijing Organizing Committee’s website contains only her basic personal, event and schedule information without any of the lengthy background details of the English version.
Also apparently overlooked by many social media users was a contradictory piece of information about Gu’s citizenship that had been on the International Olympic Committee’s website, Olympics.com, in the opening days of the Beijing Games.
In a report published Wednesday, the Taiwan News site noted that an Olympics.com article titled “Five things you didn’t know about Eileen Gu” ended with a sentence referring to Gu as having “dual nationality.”
That sentence disappeared from the article on Thursday, according to a cached view of it from that date as seen by VOA. An earlier cached view of the article reviewed by VOA shows that the sentence was visible online going back to at least February 5.
Eileen Gu profile screenshot, Feb. 5, 2022.
Eileen Gu profile screenshot, Feb. 10, 2022.
VOA emailed the Beijing Organizing Committee and the International Olympic Committee early Friday asking why the details about Gu’s citizenship were scrubbed from their respective websites sometime Wednesday or Thursday. No immediate responses were received.
VOA also messaged Gu on Instagram and emailed the management companies evolution management + marketing and IMG, which represent her sporting and fashion activities respectively for comment, without response.
Susan Brownell, an American research specialist on Chinese sports and an anthropology professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, told VOA that she does not believe that either of the scrubbed statements about Gu, regarding renouncing her U.S. citizenship and having dual nationality, is more definitive than the other.
Speaking in a Friday interview, Brownell also said she believes there are two main reasons for the silence on citizenship questions from China’s Olympic organizers, Gu and many of the other 29 foreign-born and foreign-raised athletes on the Chinese Winter Games team.
China has never before fielded so many foreign-born or foreign-raised athletes on an Olympic team for either the Summer or Winter Games. It recruited the 30 athletes with foreign ties to its current Olympic team, 28 of them ice hockey players, to try to improve its relatively weak performance in winter sports as it hosts the Winter Games for the first time.
“After the Beijing Games, they’re going to assess public opinion about having those athletes in the team: Was it good for Chinese sports, patriotism and the government’s image, or was there a negative nationalist backlash?” Brownell said. “It’s a politically sensitive matter that they would want to keep a lid on at this point,” she added.
Brownell said China also is wary of publicly declaring that it may have granted Gu or any of the other foreign-born and foreign-raised athletes rare exceptions to its nationality law to enable them to naturalize as Chinese citizens without giving up their dual nationalities.
“You’ve got hundreds of thousands of people in China that really want dual citizenship. If you give it to athletes, the other people immediately are going to start saying, ‘What about me?’ I think that’s why you have the silence,” she said.
Lin Yang and Adrianna Zhang of VOA’s Mandarin service contributed to this story.
