German teen's cause of death remains mystery

Preliminary autopsy provides no answers for ‘heartbroken' host mom

By Shawn Cetrone - scetrone@heraldonline.com

A preliminary autopsy has failed to determine why a foreign exchange student attending South Pointe High School died last week, York County coroner Sabrina Gast said.

Gast has ruled out swine flu, meningitis and an aneurysm in the death of Hannah Hinrichsen, 16, of Germany. The coroner said results from extensive laboratory tests could take six weeks.

“We're looking for anything and everything,” Gast said. “Sometimes we don't come up with an answer. There's a possibility that we won't.”

Hinrichsen felt sick when she woke up for school on Oct. 28.

“She said ‘Barb, I don't feel good. I feel like throwing up when I get up to walk, and I have a headache,'” her host mother, Barbara Moseley, said in an interview.

Moseley said she suggested Hinrichsen stay home from school and rest. Around 2 p.m., Moseley went to check on her to see if she was hungry. “I went to shake her, and she was cold.”

After calling 911, Moseley said, she panicked.

“I kept going back in and shaking her, thinking this is a bad dream, and I'll wake up,” she said. “Or if I keep shaking her and calling her a little louder, she'd wake up.”

Trying new things

Moseley met Hinrichsen over the summer after clicking on a Web ad for Youth For Understanding, a nonprofit international education program that places foreign exchange students with host families.

After a criminal background check, interviews and a home inspection, Moseley was given several student profiles to choose from. The description for Hinrichsen, who lived on a farm in northern Germany near the Baltic Sea, said she was an evangelical Christian.

“She just sounded interesting,” Moseley said.

Hinrichsen arrived in August, two weeks before school started.

Her smile, quick wit and outgoing personality attracted friends across campus. She grew especially close with a second exchange student who came to stay with Moseley that summer.

The three of them took trips to Hilton Head Island, the South Carolina state fair and the movies to see “Couples Retreat.” They shopped at Carolina Place Mall in Pineville and Concord Mills in Concord, N.C. One weekend, they saw the University of South Carolina's football team play Vanderbilt.

“College football in the South is a spectacle,” Moseley said. “I had to take them. They loved it.”

They were planning to travel to San Francisco in December.

During her time in Rock Hill, Hinrichsen ate peanut butter, tried Ben & Jerry's ice cream and carved a pumpkin for the first time. She and the other exchange student were excited about getting a live tree for Christmas and decorating it.

“She was so enthused about trying new things,” Moseley said.

Moseley recalled driving home from the airport when Hinrichsen arrived. She stopped by Sonic to order Hinrichsen a peanut butter milkshake with double peanut butter.

“Hannah was hooked,” she said.

Recently Hinrichsen was preparing for the prom.

“She had already bought prom shoes,” Moseley said. They were pink, high heels with straps.

After Hinrichsen died, the second exchange student moved in with another host family and changed schools. The memories at South Pointe and Moseley's house were too painful.

Hinrichsen's parents flew in from Germany over the weekend and attended her memorial at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Rock Hill on Monday.

Struggling with stress and grief, Moseley suffered a strained heart muscle. She is in the hospital resting.

“I am heartbroken,” she said Saturday.

“It's like I've lost one of my own children.”