American backpacker, artist killed in Nepal

Dahlia Yehia, an American artist, backpacker killed in Nepal. (source: Find Dahlia, Facebook page started by her family and friends to help find Yehia)

After the devastating earthquake in April in Nepal, Dahlia Yehia, an artist and a teacher from the US, backpacked to the Asian country to help the people.

According to the “Find Dahlia” Facebook page her family and friends started to help find her, Yehia, 25, arrived on July 20 and kept in touch with home through social media. When she didn’t contact anybody after a WhatsApp message on August 6, her family and friends became worried.

Last week, the family received the news of Yehia’s death, from the U.S. Embassy.

Nepal’s Kaski District Police Superintendent Hari Bahadur Pal said a man hosting Yehia in his home confessed to beating her to death and dumping her body in a river. The man met Yehia through couchsurfing.com, a website that connects local hosts with travelers, Voice of America News reported.

The police said that after being arrested on September 4, the suspect, Narayan Paudel, tried to kill himself by jumping out a police station window.

Yehia’s body still has not been found. They haven’t offered a motive yet.

Yehia was remembered for her questioning spirit and artistic nature.

Describing herself on her blog, The Tea Devourer, she writes: “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for, and that’s how I want it to be for a while.”

“Dahlia was an artist, art was pretty much an extension of her being,” her friend Meghan Moharter said. “She was incredibly talented.”

Yehia attended Kalamazoo College in Michigan and received a bachelor of fine arts in painting. She studied abroad in Ecuador. After graduation, she set out from Michigan for Phoenix. According to her LinkedIn profile, she was employed in Phoenix as a woodworker, youth care worker and K-8 art teacher for about two years.

She next took a job as a youth worker in Boston for a year and taught art at Sci-Tech Preparatory in Austin, Texas, LinkedIn says.

Questions remain about what happened in Nepal. The nation is heavily dependent on tourism and is known to be open and friendly to travelers.

Nepalese police rescue team carry a search operation near a river side area at Nadipur, in Nepal, Thursday, Sept. 10, 2015. Police are searching a river in Nepal for the body of a 27-year-old teacher Dahlia Yehia from Texas who was beaten to death and thrown from a bridge in western Nepal last month. (AP Photo/Santosh Pokharel)