[4] On October 30, 2010, Luis Andrés went to a Halloween costume party at a night club in the popular Zona Rosa in Bogotá with his date, Laura Moreno, as well as Jessy Quintero, and several other friends and classmates.
She explained that Laura was frantic and told her that Luis jumped into the water channel (which was less than 50 cm deep) and that she was unable to see him anymore.
Another call was received around 9 p.m. and when the firemen returned to search again, they found the dead body of Colmenares about 400 feet away from where Moreno said Luis had jumped.
The result of the first autopsy, showed Colmenares had a grade 3 of alcohol intoxication, which would have strongly impaired him, and confirmed the accidental death hypothesis.
According to the autopsy performed at Instituto Nacional de Medicina Legal y Ciencias Forenses, by Leslie del Pilar Rodríguez, Luis Colmenares suffered a violent death.
A second autopsy by Máximo Duque, former director of the same Institute, hired by the Colmenares family and research done by Prosecutor Antonio González concluded that the body had eight wounds, none compatible with a fall.
[7] However, the murder theory was disproved during court proceedings, and even the prosecutor was found to be involved in a false witnesses’ plot to inculpate Colmenares' classmates.
Ayola added that Cárdenas offered one million pesos (approximately $500) to Cristian in exchange for their silence and that he received part of the money.
The prosecutors stated in the trial files that they had intercepted conversations between Cárdenas and Laura Moreno about his family having an "important contact" in the General Attorney's Office so she should keep her calm.
[12] The mother of Carlos Cárdenas, María del Pilar Gómez, hired a lawyer, Aidé Acevedo, to press Armando Novoa, Director of the National Prosecution Office, into changing the prosecutor in charge of the case.
[18] On June 28, 2012, the Attorney General, Eduardo Montealegre stated that the initial prosecutor, Antonio González, expelled from the case after pressure from defense lawyers, and other auxiliary attorneys involved in the case, had to be protected from an assassination attempt detected by the CTI (Technical Investigation Team or Cuerpo Técnico de Investigación) and that his security scheme had been reinforced.
[19] The same day, Jaime Granados, defense lawyer for Cárdenas, denounced penally González for retiring blood samples taken from Colmenares body, but offered no explanations about the motives of the attorney.
[20] On October 22, 2013, in an interview with RCN news, Wilmer Ayola confessed he had been paid to provide false testimony in support of the prosecutor's murder theory.
[22] According to the prosecutors:[23] Luis Andrés Colmenares was the victim of a beating which caused multiple fractures to his skull, he lost consciousness and died when he was hidden partially underwater by his attackers, inside the tunnel of the Virrey park water canal.