‘It’s crazy here’: last texts of graduate killed in drug ritual

Killed in Peru: Unais Gomes

An ex-City banker knifed to death during an Amazonian drug ceremony sent his girlfriend worrying text messages days before, she has revealed.

Cambridge graduate Unais Gomes, 26, was allegedly stabbed by a Canadian tourist while taking a hallucinogen at a jungle retreat in Peru.

Joshua Freeman Stevens, 29, knifed Mr Gomes “in self-defence” during the ceremony in which they both drank the plant brew ayahuasca, authorities said.

Witnesses claim Mr Gomes, from St John’s Wood, grabbed a kitchen knife during a “bad trip” before he was fatally wounded with it last Wednesday.

Three days earlier, he had sent his girlfriend texts in which she said he sounded “weird”. In one, sent on Saturday, he wrote “I ran away from my retreat”. In another sent straight afterwards, he said “Bad experience”.

The next day he sent more messages. In one he wrote “Crazy here as well” and “I don’t like it”. He added “Its just the place I went to didnt feel right [sic]” and then, in a final text, he wrote he was going back to the retreat, saying “Now they have called an amazing shaman to clean up that place”.

Paying tribute to her “sunshine”, his girlfriend, a 24-year-old marketing graduate from San Francisco who asked not to be named, said: “Unais was a dreamer, and I wanted to dream with him. I am devastated to lose him but I am even more frustrated to think about all these things he wanted to accomplish in his life. Unais had so much ambition and wanted to make the world a better place. He did already, just by being part of it.”

Mr Stevens was arrested after the killing at Phoenix Ayahuasca lodge, outside the city of Iquitos on the Amazon, but was later freed without charge.

He said: “The police have released me because there were too many [witnesses] that had seen it as self-defence. I am still in shock. Things were going so well here, I was healing myself so much. [Unais and I] got along so well and talked for hours every day.

“He really was becoming a good friend. May god bless Unais, his family and friends and my friends and family. This will all make sense one day.”

Mr Gomes’ family are originally from Kyrgyzstan but he was raised in London and studied economics at Cambridge. He went on to work at Citibank in London for three years and moved into private investment. A year ago, he gave it all up to build Clean Tech, a “catastrophe response” company focused on water sustainability, in San Francisco.

Last night his mother, Asel Usupbaeva, was too upset to speak. Her son’s friends in London have questioned the police investigation and called for the Foreign Office to ensure it is reopened.

However, the department said it was not intervening in the investigation but is supporting Mr Gomes’ family.

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