Nearly a month after Shanquella Robinson, a 25-year-old woman from North Carolina, died while on vacation in Mexico, local authorities have filed charges against another American woman seen attacking her in a video.
Robinson was vacationing with six friends when she died in a rented villa on Oct. 29, The Associated Press reported. The location of Robinson’s death has been variously reported as San Jose del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas.
Her friends blamed her death on alcohol poisoning, according to Queen City News, but authorities are now treating the incident as a homicide.
According to Mexican prosecutor Antonio Lopez Rodriguez, Robinson’s death was the result of a “direct attack” and was “not an accident” as her friends claimed. The identity of the suspect has not been released, but authorities believe that one of Robinson’s friends is responsible for her death.
Prosecutors are now seeking to extradite the suspect to Mexico in order to face charges.
Robinson’s death gained national attention when video emerged showing a woman beating her in the villa where she was found dead.
In the video, a man is heard asking Robinson, who is naked, if she can “fight back,” to which she replies, “No.”
An autopsy showed that Robinson died of a severe spinal cord or neck injury.
Robinson’s mother, Sallamondra, told Queen City News that she talked with Shanquella shortly before her death.
“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,” Sallamondra said.
She added that Shanquella’s friends couldn’t give her a clear answer as to what actually happened to her daughter.
“They said she wasn’t feeling well. She had alcohol poisoning,” she said. “They couldn’t get a pulse. Each one of the people that was there with her was telling different stories.”
“When the autopsy came back, they said it didn’t have anything to do with alcohol,” Sallamondra added. “[They] said that she had a broken neck and her spine in the back was cracked. She had been beaten.”
Shanquella’s sister Quilla Long started a GoFundMe to help cover the family’s legal fees.
According to Long, the U.S. State Department said in a statement that there is “no clear evidence of foul play” in Robinson’s death. However, the FBI confirmed to Queen City News that it had opened an investigation into the incident.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
