Shanquella Robinson: 25-Year-Old Woman Found Beaten To Death On Mexico Trip With Friends
Shanquella Robinson, 25, agreed to accompany a group of friends to Cabo, Mexico to celebrate one of their birthdays. She was later found dead. An autopsy showed she had been beaten and her spine cracked.
Shanquella Robinson was a young, vibrant woman from Charlotte, North Carolina who had a heart of gold and was known for her talent in hair-braiding. The 25-year-old had agreed to accompany a group of friends to Cabo, Mexico to celebrate one of their birthdays and all seemed well.
“She told me they had a chef. They were getting ready to eat. They were eating tacos or a salad or something, and I said, ‘OK. I love you. Have a good night, and I will talk to you tomorrow.’ I never talked to my child again. She never made it back home,” her mom, Salamondra Robinson, told Queen City News.
Who Killed Shanquella Robinson? Mexico Mystery Deepens
Mexican authorities have recently put new focus on Robinson’s death, which they are now investigating as a femicide, which is when a woman is killed because of her gender. Femicide, which carries a prison sentence of up to 60 years in Mexico, is prosecuted separately from homicide there.
Robinson’s sister, Tequila Long, said in an Essence interview that Robinson’s friends told her and her mother that no fighting happened on the trip. “I was believing the dude that she went on the trip with because that was her best friend. I didn’t think that he would be malicious about anything. I didn’t think that he would tell us a lie. I trusted him,” said Long.
Her mother said her first indication that something was wrong on the trip was when she received a panicked phone call from one of her daughter’s friends.
“They said she wasn’t feeling well. She had alcohol poisoning,” she said. “They couldn’t get a pulse,” she continued.
The family then received devastating news: On October 30, 2022, just a little more than a day after Shanquella had arrived in Cabo, she was dead.
Grieving from afar, the family made arrangements with the Mexican authorities to have an autopsy done and later to retrieve Shanquella’s body. But when they heard the medical examiner’s report on the cause of death, that’s when grief turned to anger.
“When the autopsy came back, they said it didn’t have anything to do with the alcohol,” Salamondra said. “[They] said that she had a broken neck and her spine in the back was cracked. She had been beaten.”
All of the friends on the Cabo trip returned to the United States, but they’ve been suspiciously mum about the death of their friend.
“Each one of the people that was there with her was telling different stories,” the victim’s mother told local media.
The Mexican authorities, who initially were handling the case as a potentially criminal one, soon pulled back due to circumstances that they have labeled as “inconclusive.”
What made matters worse is the surfacing of an internet video that appears to show a woman mercilessly punching and pounding a naked and defenseless Shanquella in a motel room.
In the video, which BlackGirlTragic.com will not post, a voice in the background is heard saying, "Quella can you at least fight back, do something."
Shanquella’s family is currently in touch with the U.S. State Department to see if they have any recourse with the Mexican authorities.
Robinson’s death certificate, obtained by local media, lists the cause of death as “severe spinal cord injury and atlas luxation.”
The atlas is what the first bone in the neck is called. Luxation means the neck became unstable due to excessive movement, compromising the vertebrae. The autopsy also said that Robinson succumbed to her injuries within 15 minutes.
In Mexico, the state attorney general’s office of Baja California Sur told WSOC-TV it “maintain the lines of investigations to collect more evidence to achieve the accurate clarification of the events, without ruling out any hypothesis.”
A GoFundMe account set up on behalf of the victim’s family says:
My name is Tequila Long, the sister of Shanquella Robinson. My beautiful sister #ShanquellaRobinson, recently went on a trip to Cabo, Mexico, with people she believed were her friends. During this trip, she was found dead. Her associates claimed she died of alcohol poisoning, but the death certificate from the Mexican government contradicts this statement as it reveals a broken neck and cracked spine and a time of death which is 15 minutes after she sustained these injuries.
The United States State Department released a statement claiming “no clear evidence of foul play,” yet there is a video circulating of a woman violently attacking Shanquella. This statement is unacceptable, and we are beyond devastated. We continue to fight for the truth.
We face a tremendous unexpected financial burden and a great deal of pain as we prepare to lay my sister to rest. Any support you can contribute to our legal fees and other critical expenses is greatly appreciated.
Robinson’s funeral was Saturday, November 19, 2022 at Macedonia Baptist Church in Charlotte.
In a video posted online, one of those purported to be on the trip tried to clear his name after he said he began receiving death threats.
“I left on Saturday. The trip was from Friday to Monday,” he said in the minuteslong clip. The unidentified male mentioned that he was not present when the fight took place because he joined the group a day after the friends arrived. “I don’t know nothin’ of it. Don’t know nothin’ ’bout it. Don’t know why it happened,” he mentioned in the video.
The family wants to know what really happened to Shanquella Robinson.
“I probably won’t be at ease until someone’s arrested,” said the victim’s mother.
