TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Friends attend cafe crime reconstruction
How it happened: Police officers conduct a preliminary re-enactment on Monday of a social gathering following which a woman, Wayan Mirna Salihin, died in suspicious circumstances after drinking a cup of coffee at a Grand Indonesia restaurant last week
Change Size
How it happened: Police officers conduct a preliminary re-enactment on Monday of a social gathering following which a woman, Wayan Mirna Salihin, died in suspicious circumstances after drinking a cup of coffee at a Grand Indonesia restaurant last week.(JP/Seto Wardhana) (JP/Seto Wardhana)
H
span class="inline inline-center">How it happened: Police officers conduct a preliminary re-enactment on Monday of a social gathering following which a woman, Wayan Mirna Salihin, died in suspicious circumstances after drinking a cup of coffee at a Grand Indonesia restaurant last week.(JP/Seto Wardhana)
The Jakarta Police on Monday conducted a crime reconstruction at the Olivier Restaurant in the Grand Indonesia mall, Central Jakarta, in an attempt to reveal the mystery behind the death of Wayan Mirna Salihin, 27, who died after drinking a cup of coffee at the restaurant.
The closed-door reconstruction started at about 10 a.m. and finished three hours later.
'I am sorry, but you cannot pass here for the moment,' Miftahudin, a security officer at Grand Indonesia, where the restaurant is located, said on Monday.
He said the restaurant was empty of visitors. 'There are only the restaurant's owners and several employees,' he added.
The reconstruction, however, could be seen and heard from outside the restaurant through the
windows.
During the reconstruction, officers were seen speaking with two girls, apparently the friends who accompanied the victim to the restaurant at the time of the incident, and several employees of the restaurant.
The two friends, one of whom wore a cream-colored outfit while the other was in pink, were seen sitting next to an employee of the restaurant who played the part of Mirna. They were sitting at table number 45.
During the reconstruction the employee playing Mirna pretended she felt dizzy as she drank her coffee. She was seen asking one of her 'friends' to smell the beverage.
'It's awful. It's so bad,' said the friend, repeating Mirna's statement in English, during the crime reconstruction.
The Monday's reconstruction was part of the investigation into Mirna's death, which police suspect was murder.
Last Wednesday, Mirna went to Olivier with two girlfriends.
One friend came 40 minutes earlier and ordered the two others their drinks, according to the Jakarta Police.
Mirna died after she drank one of the cups of coffee the friend had ordered. She reportedly went into a seizure and froth came out of her mouth after she took several gulps of the coffee.
The two friends took her to the nearest clinic in the mall and later Mirna's husband came and took his wife to Abdi Waluyo Hospital, where she died.
The police said the doctor at the clinic asked Mirna's friends whether she suffered from epilepsy, but they did not know. Later, the husband said she did not have a history of the ailment.
Central Jakarta Police chief, Sr. Comr. Hendro Pandowo later denied a rumor that the restaurant's closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras had recorded the moment when something had been put into Mirna's drink, saying that the CCTV recordings just showed normal activities.
Meanwhile, the management of Olivier Restaurant refused to comment on the issue because of the ongoing investigation.
On Sunday, Jakarta Police detective corps chief Sr. Comr. Krishna Murti said the police had summoned the two friends on Sunday, but the one who ordered the victim coffee did not show up. However, she did attend the reconstruction on Monday.
The Jakarta Police are currently having the victim's stomach and liver examined to learn the cause of her death. The police said on Sunday that the results would be released on Monday but by Monday afternoon they were not yet available.
An initial examination showed that Mirna's stomach had bled and was damaged, allegedly by a corrosive substance. The police, however, declined to connect the substance to the coffee she drank at the restaurant. (saf /agn)
