An 18-year-old boxer died after a knockout in Montreal. The fight should’ve never happened

At the end of the fourth round in a six-round fight on Aug. 28, 2021, Jeanette Zacarias Zapata went into convulsions.

A left uppercut and a right hook from her opponent were among the string of punches that had become too much to overcome for the 18-year-old Mexican boxer.

Her trainer, on-site paramedics and a doctor assigned to the event rushed into the ring to assist her as she lay unconscious at Montreal’s IGA stadium.

It was Zapata’s sixth — and last — professional fight. She died five days later at Sacré-Coeur-de-Montréal Hospital.

Her death came three and a half months after she had suffered a concussion in a knockout loss in her home country.

This interview is really difficult for me, Irene Zapata, the deceased boxer’s mother, told Radio-Canada’s Enquête investigative team, while sitting next to her husband inside their home in Aguascalientes, Mexico.

Holding back tears proved to be a nearly impossible task.

It’s been really difficult without her, said the grieving mother. I lost my daughter, my friend, my confidante.

Jeanette’s parents, Irene Zapata and Esteban Zacarias, fought back tears throughout their interview with Enquête. Photo: Radio-Canada / Frédéric Lafleur

During the interview, Enquête shared information it had uncovered about their daughter’s death. It provided the couple with their daughter’s radiology report that helped ensure the fight in Montreal went ahead.

It was a fake document.

I’m traumatized, said Esteban Zacarias, the boxer’s father. I can’t believe it.

Shortly after Jeanette was hospitalized in Montreal, Groupe Yvon Michel (GYM), a well-known boxing promoter that set up that fight, said the boxer had undergone neurological exams given that she had been knocked out in her previous fight.

In 2023, a Quebec coroner ruled that the young woman’s death was accidental and may have been precipitated by Second Impact Syndrome (SIS). SIS occurs when people experience a second head injury before fully recovering from the first.

A deeper look reveals several more layers to Jeanette’s death that go well beyond the punches that were landed during the bout.

Groupe Yvon Michel (GYM), a well-known boxing promoter in Quebec, organized the event that took place on Aug. 28, 2021 at IGA Stadium in Montreal. (Ivanoh Demers/Radio-Canada) Photo: Radio-Canada / Ivanoh Demers

A doctor no one knows

The Quebec liquor and gaming authority that sanctions prize fights, the Régie des alcools, des courses et des jeux (RACJ), claimed it found nothing out of the ordinary when it stamped that radiology report just days before the fight.

But according to several experts Radio-Canada consulted, the report had an unusual conclusion.

The patient is in perfect health, which allows her to take part in extreme sports, it reads, despite the fact that the boxer suffered a concussion in her previous fight in May of that year.

These kinds of reports don’t typically weigh in on a patient’s abilities and instead stick to highlighting anomalies or injuries on a scan.

• Boxer who died after Montreal bout may have suffered from Second Impact syndrome, coroner says (new window)

The document was signed by a radiologist named Estela Jimenez Ochoa.

It had the letterhead of a clinic in Aguascalientes, the 18-year-old fighter’s hometown (the city is also located in a state that bears the same name). But the date on the report — Aug. 15, 2021, just under two weeks before the fatal boxing match — fell on a Sunday.

An online search shows the clinic is always closed on Sundays. This was confirmed with both a phone call and a visit to the clinic shortly after arriving in Mexico on a Sunday.

When the Enquête team returned to the clinic the following day, no one present knew who Estela Jimenez Ochoa was.

As far as the head of the clinic was concerned, the document was fake — an opinion also shared by Dr. Anabel Cervantes, the president of the radiologists’ association for the state of Aquascalientes.

This doctor, Estela Jimenez Ochoa, doesn’t exist in our database, neither at the state or city level, she said.

The licence number at the bottom of the document? It turns out it belonged to an accountant.

‘It cost this young woman her life’

The forged radiology document is not the only reason Jeanette was given the green light to fight in Montreal despite the concussion she suffered three months prior.

Dr. Juan Carlos Sanchez, the physician for the Aguascalientes boxing commission, had to fill out a mandatory questionnaire for the RACJ.

Prior to landing in Montreal, Jeanette consulted with Sanchez on at least two occasions, Radio-Canada found.

On May 18, 2021, just four days after her brutal knockout loss in Mexico months prior to her death, Jeanette met the boxing commission’s physician with brain scans that had been taken at a hospital.

Enquête was able to obtain the two sets of scans after both fights — the ones Jeanette would’ve shown Sanchez during that visit, and the ones that were completed at Sacré-Coeur-de-Montréal Hospital just before she died.

Anabel Cervantes, the head of the association of radiologists for the state of Aguascalientes, says the medical reports that were submitted prior to Jeanette’s fight in Montreal led to her death. Photo: Radio-Canada / Frédéric Lafleur

Each medical specialist consulted for this story agreed that the images captured at the hospital in Mexico in May 2021 showed a heavily damaged brain.

Cervantes, the head of the radiologists’ association in Aguascalientes, agreed and even went a step further: Jeanette had no business stepping foot in a ring again after her loss in Mexico.

Sanchez, however, simply told the boxer to rest for a few weeks. He saw her again during the summer, after she had received an invite from the GYM promotion company.

It was for a fight against Quebecer Marie-Pier Houle.

Around this time, Jeanette was still experiencing concussion symptoms, according to her parents.

She already had intense pain. She complained a lot about her head, her mother Irene recalled.

But Sanchez made no mention of these symptoms in the RACJ questionnaire. There’s also no mention of the seriousness of her previous injuries.

It’s an incomplete medical report, said Cervantes. He omitted crucial information and it cost this young woman her life.

Sanchez had agreed to an interview for this story but backed out just a few hours before it was scheduled to take place. He then stopped answering all of Enquête‘s calls and messages.

Jeanette’s family wasn’t present during the appointments with Sanchez. She went there with her coach.

Believe me, had I realized… that her brain had not fully recovered… I wouldn’t have let her leave, Esteban Zacarias, Jeanette’s father, said while wiping tears from his eyes.

What a nightmare.

Aguascalientes boxing commission defends Sanchez

Enquête met with Jeanette’s coach, Luis Cruz, and showed him the forged radiology report.

I don’t remember. I have a hard time remembering, he said, but added that he specifically recalls that brain scans were done, but it was in a different clinic than the one mentioned on the document.

He was also shown the RACJ questionnaire filled out by Dr. Sanchez that didn’t include details about Jeanette’s injury history.

I don’t know why he didn’t put that in. He’s a doctor, not a charlatan, Cruz said, while emphasizing on several occasions during the interview that he himself had done nothing wrong.

Luis Cruz was Jeanette’s coach for several years. Photo: Radio-Canada / Daphnée Hacker-B.

Arturo Muñoz, the president of the Aguascalientes boxing commission, defended Sanchez.

I can’t tell you if the doctor made a mistake. I don’t know what happened or why he didn’t include that information, he said.

As for the forged radiology report, Muñoz said he was surprised and that he had never seen or heard about it.

He was not the boxing commission’s president at the time of Jeanette’s death. His predecessor, Christian Garduno, emphatically refused to speak with Enquête.

Jeanette’s brain scans in Quebec

Stéphane Ledoux doesn’t like boxing, but the neurologist has watched footage of Jeanette’s final fight hundreds of times, in hopes of understanding what happened.

The images are constantly swirling in my head, he said. This is an 18-year-old woman that had her whole life ahead of her.

He had begun his own investigation into her death. Lacking resources, answers and unable to obtain the scan performed on Jeanette’s brain during her hospital stay in Quebec, Ledoux reached out to Enquête, and that’s a big reason why this story came together.

With her family’s approval, Enquête was able to get Jeanette’s brain scans from the Montreal hospital where she died.

Stéphane Ledoux, a Quebec-based neurologist, has had Jeanette’s death on his mind for more than three years. Photo: Radio-Canada / Ivanoh Demers

They showed the same injuries as the scans in Mexico — but worse. In both cases, the right side of the brain was damaged, with considerable inflammation compressing the left side, the midline had deviated toward the left and there was bleeding in the space between the brain and the skull on the right.

Based on these images, we can say without any doubt that in the event of a significant blow to the skull, this person was at risk of serious neurological complications, including death, said Ledoux.

The neurologists always scoffed at the idea of Jeanette’s death being accidental. Now, he says, there’s definitive proof.

It was extremely preventable, he said.

Another fake report — this time for another boxer

Enquête shared its findings with the RACJ, Quebec’s liquor and gaming authority.

In a statement, the provincial agency expressed complete shock.

We are floored by the information that you have brought to our attention, wrote RACJ spokesperson Joyce Tremblay.

In light of the gravity of the situation, we have immediately started a verification of the medical documents.

Giovanni Flores Martinez, another Mexican boxer who fought during the same event in Montreal, also had a radiological report signed by the same fictional radiologist from Aguascalientes whose name appears on Jeanette’s.

The RACJ, which is part of Quebec’s Public Security Ministry, declined repeated requests for interviews. Public Security Minister François Bonnardel also declined to be interviewed.

‘Totally irresponsible’

GYM, the Quebec boxing promoter, translated Jeanette’s radiology report and sent it to the RACJ in the lead-up to the fight in Montreal.

Yvon Michel, the president and founder of the promotion company that bears his name, says the proper procedure was followed.

He was still convinced that her death was accidental — that is, until Enquête revealed its findings to him during an interview.

This is irresponsible, totally irresponsible, Michel said, reacting to the fact that Jeanette’s medical history was not included in the RACJ questionnaire.

Then, there’s the fact that the radiology report was fake.

They cheated. They put her in the ring. It’s criminal what these people did, said Michel.

Questions remain about whose responsibility it was to make sure that Jeanette was healthy enough to fight. As far as the RACJ is concerned, it’s up to the promoter to make sure fighters are fit to fight.

We are going to ask organizers to be more careful when it comes to the authenticity of submitted documents, the liquor and gaming authority said in a statement.

However, Michel says promoters help foreign boxers get their documents to the RACJ, but it’s not up to them to authenticate them.

Medical documents, we don’t read those. I can’t evaluate if a boxer is in good health, he said.

I can evaluate their level of experience but I can’t evaluate a document that a doctor filled out for a boxer. That’s neither my competence nor my responsibility.

With files from Daphnée Hacker-B, Paloma Martinez Mendez, Benoit Michaud, Franciszek Czyzowicz and translated by CBC’s Antoni Nerestant

This article is republished from RCI.