Shanquella Robinson arrived in Mexico on October 28, 2022, and her mother called to ensure she had arrived safely at the luxurious villa where she was vacationing with six friends from her hometown of Charlotte, N.C.
Shanquella’s mother, Sallamondra Robinson “And I never spoke to my daughter again”. (Photo: Yahoo Finance)
“She said they were all having a good time, and I told her I’d talk to her tomorrow,” says Shanquella’s mother, Sallamondra Robinson, to PEOPLE. “And I never saw or spoke to my daughter again.”
Sallamondra received a phone call the next day from one of Shanquella’s friends, Khalil Cooke, who was traveling with her. Shanquella, he stated, had alcohol toxicity and needed medical assistance. He called again four hours later to say Shanquella had died.
“I was just sick because I couldn’t get there,” explains Sallamondra. “I was sick to my stomach.”
Sallamondra recalls her youngest daughter having “a kind heart” and being a “loving person.”
“She’d give you the shirt off her back,” adds Sallamondra. “She didn’t hurt people, and she wasn’t into drama.”
Shanquella’s family thought she died of alcohol poisoning for weeks, but in November, a distressing and violent video of Shanquella being savagely assaulted by a lady at what appeared to be the same house in Mexico where she died began to circulate online.
An unidentified male can be heard in the background of the video calling Shanquella by a nickname and saying, “Quella, can you at least fight back?”
Shanquella is naked and hardly speaks as she is repeatedly slapped and kicked in the violent footage.
According to the Robinson family attorneys, after the video surfaced, Mexican authorities opened an investigation into Shanquella’s death and eventually labeled it a case of femicide — a gender-based murder and hate crime — and asked for U.S. criminal charges.
They contained Shanquella’s autopsy report, which was performed in Mexico one day following her death. Her cause of death is “atlas and medullary dislocation” – a fractured neck and spine — and she died violently.
It also describes Shanquella’s additional injuries, which include contusions to the “frontal region of her head” and both of her hip bones, as well as a friction burn on her left ankle.
According to the Robinson family’s attorneys, Mexico officials identified the woman in the video hitting Shanquella as one of her travel companions and have filed an arrest order for her.
Despite the findings in Mexico, the US Department of Justice declared on April 12 that no charges would be filed in connection with Shanquella’s death.
The agency stated in a press release that federal officials conducted an autopsy on Shanquella in North Carolina and that based on the facts, investigators “have concluded that federal charges cannot be pursued.”
“We’re disappointed, but we’re not deterred,” Robinson family attorney Sue-Ann Robinson (no related) remarked during a press conference livestreamed by WSOC following the Department of Justice’s decision. “It’s not surprising; Black and Brown people have always had to carve their own path to justice, and we’ve done so since the beginning.”
According to Sue-Ann, the autopsy performed in the United States months after Shanquella’s death did not reveal a spinal damage, as the autopsy performed in Mexico did. She further stated that the cause of death from the autopsy in the United States remains unknown.
“Her attack was caught on video, and now we’re told there will be no arrest,” she continued. “It reminded me of when we were told we weren’t seeing what we were seeing with George Floyd.”
Sue-Ann said that Shanquella’s case was not taken seriously from the start, resulting in inconsistencies in the inquiry.
“Today, we ended up with way more questions than answers,” Sue-Ann said at the press conference. “We support this family and will continue to support them until the end.”
According to Mario Black, the founder of the Million Youth March of Charlotte and a community leader in Charlotte, Shanquella’s family “can’t begin their healing process that they need until justice is served.”
The Robinson family and their friends, according to Sue-Ann, will hold a rally in Washington, D.C. on May 19 to fight for criminal charges in the United States.
“The last message our government wants to send to anyone is that you can commit crimes against U.S. citizens abroad and then flee back to the US and hide,” Sue-Ann told PEOPLE.
“Shanquella was a real person,” Sue-Ann explained. “She braided children’s hair, she was educated, and she will be missed and loved as a sister and daughter.”
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