Shanquella Robinson’s family begs Biden to intervene in case

The family of Shanquella Robinson, the North Carolina woman who died in Mexico last fall, has claimed her friend is wanted by authorities in her mysterious death — and called on President Biden to extradite the pal back to the country.

Robinson’s family penned the missive Monday to Biden, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and other diplomatic officials, asking them to intervene in the investigation into her Oct. 29 death while on a trip to San José del Cabo with friends.

“The President or the Secretary of State must step in and ask: for the extradition of the suspect” or prosecute the case stateside, the letter from the family’s attorneys said, according to The Root.

The Mexican government issued an arrest warrant for an unnamed American citizen who was a “direct aggressor” in a video taken of Robinson being brutally beaten before she was found dead at the villa she was sharing with friends.

But despite authorities claiming that they’re working with US officials on the extradition, there has been no arrest in the case.

In the letter to the Biden administration, attorneys for Robinson’s family claimed that a witness identified the assailant in the video as Daejhanae Jackson, though authorities have not named her as a suspect, The Charlotte Observer reported.

The 18-page letter also included details from Robinson’s autopsy and previously unseen prosecutor and police notes.

“We don’t want to leave any room for the administration to say, ‘we don’t know about the case, we didn’t have the details, we didn’t understand what the family ask is,’ attorney Sue-Ann Robinson, who is not related to the victim, told news station WB-TV. “Because we need a high level of diplomatic intervention, we sent the correspondence to the highest diplomats in our country.”

Robinson and fellow attorney Ben Crump also compared the apparent lack of process in the investigation into Robinson’s death with the immediate response to the kidnapping of four Americans in Matamoros earlier this month.

“The FBI’s response [to the kidnapping] demonstrates that the U.S. authorities and the federal police agencies are not doing all that they could do in Shanquella’s case,” Robinson previously told Yahoo News, referring to the speedy location of the kidnapped friends and the arrest of at least five suspects.

“Obviously [US officials] know how to have that high level of intervention with the appropriate Mexican authorities, because they did it immediately [for the recently kidnapped Americans],” she continued.

According to The Charlotte Observer, Jackson attended Robinson’s alma mater, Winston-Salem State University, though it is unclear if this is where the two women met. 

The pair traveled to Mexico with five other friends. After Robinson’s death, Jackson was reportedly one of the three people who returned Robinson’s luggage to her family and told her mother that she died from alcohol poisoning.

An autopsy, however, later attributed Robinson’s death in part to atlas dislocation, which meant the top of her spine was disconnected from her skill.

The attorneys’ letter also states that Jackson “manipulated” a resort staff member in order to leave Mexico as quickly as possible following the incident. 

Jackson and the rest of the group, who are now referred to as the “Cabo 6,” subsequently left the country just one day after their friend was declared dead.

Late last month, Robinson’s loved ones and local activists participated in a march in Charlotte to demand action in the case.

“The significance of it is to put pressure on Mexico because they’re not owning up to their responsibility and executing the warrants of the ‘Cabo Six,’” organizer Marcus Black told The Sun of the effort.