Weeks after prosecutors announced they would not bring any charges in the death of Shanquella Robinson, a 25-year-old Charlotte, N.C., woman who died last year while on a trip to Mexico with a friend and five other American travel mates, her family is raising doubts about the U.S. investigation.
Robinson’s mother, Sallamondra, believes she knows why her daughter is no longer alive and who did it based on video footage of Shanquella getting physically assaulted, along with various investigative documents the family has retrieved. But she says U.S. authorities aren’t willing to hold anyone accountable.
“It’s very disturbing because they saw the same thing we saw [on video],” Sallamondra Robinson told Yahoo News, referring to footage shared online just weeks after Shanquella’s death in which a blogger in North Carolina claims a woman is seen viciously attacking Robinson until her body goes limp. “Then they do an autopsy and they come back with something different. I don’t even know if we can trust them.”
On Oct. 28 of last year, Robinson traveled to the resort city of San José del Cabo, Mexico, with six others to celebrate one of their birthdays. Less than 24 hours later, she was found dead.
Initially, the people on the trip told her mother that Robinson had died of alcohol poisoning, but the family later received an autopsy report from the Mexican Secretariat of Health and learned she had suffered a broken neck and a cracked spine. No mention of alcohol was included in the report.
In a death certificate obtained by Queen City News in Charlotte, Robinson’s death was attributed to a “severe spinal cord injury and atlas luxation,” meaning that her first vertebra was loosened or detached from the base of her skull.
Nearly a month later, the video footage of Robinson being attacked appeared on social media. Her mother recognized the other people in the video as the ones who traveled with Shanquella, and she believes it was recorded on the trip to Cabo.
“I want justice, because I’ve seen her being brutally beaten,” Sallamondra said. “That’s enough evidence right there.”
Mexican authorities issued an arrest warrant in the case in November for the crime of femicide, a form of gender-based violence. They also sought to extradite an American suspect to the country to face charges. But since then, no one has been held accountable.
In the absence of any arrests six months since Robinson’s death, family attorney Sue-Ann Robinson (who is not related to the family) said she and the family have taken matters into their own hands, calling the FBI’s response to the case thus far “disrespectful.”
Over the last few months, the family has sought out investigative documents from federal authorities in Mexico about the case, called on President Biden and the State Department to intervene and continued to hold local demonstrations to ensure that Robinson’s name and legacy are not forgotten.
On April 12, federal officials with the U.S. attorneys’ offices in two districts in North Carolina announced they would not bring charges in Robinson’s death based on insufficient evidence.
“The investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Ms. Robinson has been a priority for federal prosecutors and the FBI,” a statement issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of North Carolina read in part.
“Based on the results of the autopsy and after a careful deliberation and review of the investigative materials by both U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, federal prosecutors informed Ms. Robinson’s family today that the available evidence does not support a federal prosecution.”