Shanquella Robinson: Arrest warrant issued for friend of American who died on vacation in Mexico

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Mexican prosecutors have issued an arrest warrant for a suspect in the murder of 25-year-old Shanquella Robinson, an American woman who was killed while vacationing in the resort city of San Jose del Cabo.

Daniel de la Rosa Anaya, a local prosecutor for the state of Baja California Sur, told ABC that the suspect was a friend of Robinson’s, and that the warrant issued was for the crime of femicide.

"This case is fully clarified, we even have a court order, there is an arrest warrant issued for the crime of femicide to the detriment of the victim and against an alleged perpetrator, a friend of her who is the direct aggressor. Actually it wasn’t a quarrel, but instead a direct aggression,” he told ABC.

“It’s about two Americans, the victim and the culprit,” the prosecutor added.

Robinson travelled to the southern tip of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula with six friends on 28 October. The next day, she was dead.

Bernard Robinson, the victim’s father, was initially told by her friends that his daughter had died of alcohol poisoning, according to WSOC-TV, a television station based in Robinson’s hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina.

But a death certificate obtained by The Independent revealed that she had died from a “severe spinal cord injury and atlas luxation,” and made no mention of alcohol poisoning.

On November 15, horrifying footage emerged online of a naked Shanquella being brutally beaten in a resort hotel room.

In the roughly 20-second long clip, a female aggressor approaches Shanquella and knocks her to the ground, before delivering a flurry of brutal punches and kicks. A prone Shanquella slumps, defenceless, to the floor in response. Although her attacker is fully clothed, she is inexplicably naked. A man seemingly filming the attack taunts Shanquella while doing nothing to intervene. “At least fight back, something,” he can be heard saying.

The FBI confirmed last week that it had launched an investigation into Robinson’s death.

Mr Rosa Anaya, the local prosecutor, told ABC that authorities are “carrying out all the pertinent procedures such as the Interpol alert and the request for extradition to the United States of America.”

When told by ABC that a warrant had been issued in the investigation into her daughter’s death, Robinson’s mother, Salamondra Robinson, responded: “That’s what we have been waiting for, for someone to finally be held accountable and arrested. I just can’t wait for justice to be served.”

Additional reporting by Bevan Hurley.