A year after the death of Shanquella Robinson, her family seems to be moving forward with a lawsuit against six of the people who accompanied the 25-year-old woman when she died on a vacation in Mexico.
According to Newsweek, Robinson’s family said those six friends have disrupted the investigation of their loved one’s death.
“The lawsuit will be against the six travel mates including the three who lied by omission by failing to disclose that someone had been beating Shanquella prior to her death,” the family’s lawyer, Sue-Ann Robinson, said in an interview with Newsweek.
Toward the end of 2022, a viral video showed Robinson being attacked at a vacation spot in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. As Blavity previously reported, in the video, a woman, who is believed to be one of the people who joined the group on the trip, repeatedly punched and kicked Robinson in the head. Another person is heard in the background, saying “Quella, can you at least fight back?”
Bernard Robinson said some of his daughter’s friends told officials that she died from alcohol poisoning. Mexican officials, however, said Robinson’s cause of death was “severe spinal cord injury” and “instability of her vertebrae.”
In November 2022, state prosecutor Daniel de la Rosa Anaya told ABC News that Robinson’s friend was “the direct aggressor.”
“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,” the prosecutor told ABC News at the time. “It wasn’t a quarrel, but instead a direct aggression.”
The family hasn’t revealed when they will file their lawsuit. Meanwhile, Sue-Ann Robinson said she remains in direct contact with Mexican officials. According to the lawyer, the family is “tired, weary, heartbroken and missing Shanquella but motivated by her legacy to keep moving forward on the path to her justice.”
