South Australian woman Cassandra Sainsbury has been arrested in Colombia, accused of attempting to smuggle 5.8kg of cocaine out of the country and to Australia.
It’s a charge the 22-year-old and her family strongly deny. Cassie claims she didn’t know about the drugs in her suitcase and wasn’t trying to traffic anything when she was arrested at an airport in Bogota on April 12.
Her family have done their best to explain why the alleged drugs were in her luggage, but we still have some questions left unanswered.
What was the purpose of her trip?
Cassie was reportedly in the country on a working holiday visa, but Australia doesn’t have that kind of visa arrangement with Colombia. So why has her family said that she was in the country for business?
Her sister Khala told the Daily Mail the trip “was at least in part to promote her personal training business”.
However, her fiance Scotty Broadbridge said Cassie had not been working as a PT this year, but did mention the international cleaning business she manages.
"Although Cassie is a PT, she is not currently personal training and hasn’t been for 6 months. I don’t know why that was mentioned at all," Mr Broadbridge wrote on the family's now-deleted fundraising page on Sunday.
"She helped manage a commercial cleaning business that had both national and international clients. Unfortunately, it's very easy for tourists to get targeted, especially in Colombia."
Why didn't she check the presents she bought?
Cassie's mum, Lisa Evans, told Kyle & Jackie O on KIIS FM on Monday morning that her daughter was planning to wed in February and had purchased headphones as gifts for her bridal party and family and friends.
Lisa said Cassie bought the headphones, which turned out to contain the alleged drugs in their packaging, from a man her translator had recommended.
"(The translator) had been helping her all week, taking her around and showing her places, and just being a nice guy," Ms Evans said.
"She mentioned about these headphones she wanted to get and this man said to her 'I know a guy that if you buy 16 or 18 of them, he can give you a really good price'."
Lisa said the man came to Cassie's hotel and gave her the individually wrapped headphones which she packed into her bag.
"And this is where the naive bit comes in, she didn’t even rip it open to make sure it was headphones in there," she said.
According to Cassie's family's version of events, she trusted the man who gave her the headphones, but why did she not open the packages to check the headphones were the one's she'd asked for?
Especially, if they were different shapes, sizes and weights as photos of Cassie and the alleged 18 cocaine packages police officers found seem to show. Did she think that was odd?
Perhaps the most troubling question of all is: why was her ticket to Colombia purchased as a trip via London, last minute, by a party in Hong Kong?
Now, the Adelaide woman sits in a South American prison, awaiting trial, where she could face up to 25 years in jail.
It may be until that trial that our questions are answered.
Do you check your purchases when buying souvenirs overseas?
Top Comments
Ok so besides the bleeding obvious the idiot is guilty... what kind of 22 year old girl has room for an extra 6kg of luggage in their bag!!!? Derrrr dumb bitch knew what she was doing.
Who buys headphones in Colombia for their bridal party gifts? Cheap much? You're in potentially the drug capital of the world and you take the people at their word? It doesn't make sense. The fact that there isn't a single straight answer from her family (several differing answers) is bogus. The bottom line is that unless it was getting up to no good, she had no professional reason to be there. It clearly has nothing to do with whatever job she is or isn't doing. Will be interested to see what happens.