GUATEMALA CITY – The Honduran official who died in Guatemala after being accosted by robbers choked on his own vomit as a result of an injury he suffered during the robbery, according to autopsy results released on Thursday.

Salomon Jaar, 48, and his family were waylaid by criminals Wednesday night while driving on the highway linking Guatemala to El Salvador, Guatemalan Interior Ministry spokesman Nery Morales told reporters.

He said an elite unit of Guatemala’s national police had already been assigned to the case.

The victim’s wife, Berta Lucia Bueso, said in a press conference at the Honduran Embassy in Guatemala City that one of the robbers struck her husband in the stomach, provoking the vomiting which led to his death.

“It was something very quick, it was microseconds and I wasn’t hurt by the robbers. They just asked that I cooperate. They took our jewelry and the little money we carried,” she said.

Bueso, who said the family traveled to Guatemala to take part in a Mormon spiritual retreat, plans to take her husband’s body back to their hometown, Choluteca, for burial.

The death of Jaar was announced earlier Thursday in Tegucigalpa by Reinaldo Sanchez, private secretary to Honduran President Porfirio Lobo.

Jaar held the post of presidential commissioner for southern Honduras. EFE