Shanquella Robinson’s family sues travel companions, federal prosecutors amid questions surrounding her 2022 death in Mexico

October 30, 2024

Obtained by ABC News

(CABO SAN LUCAS, MEXICO) — The family of Shanquella Robinson, the North Carolina woman who died while vacationing in Mexico in October 2022, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Robinson’s travel companions, who are referred to in the suit as “the Cabo Six,” alleging battery, negligence, conspiracy and emotional distress.

Robinson’s mother, Sallamondra Robinson, spoke out during a press conference on Tuesday, along with family attorney Sue-Ann Robinson, who has no relation to the Robinson family.

“I would like each and every one of you, if you can, anything you can do, step in and help us with justice,” Sallamondra Robinson said. “We need justice for Shanquella Robinson. It has been two years and there’s no reason that they have not been arrested yet.”

ABC News’ attempts to reach out directly to the individuals identified as the “Cabo Six” were unsuccessful. It is unclear if they have retained attorneys.

The lawsuit, which was filed in the Superior Court of Mecklenburg County on Monday, two years after Robinson’s death, was filed on behalf of Sallamondra Robinson, and also names the U.S. State Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation after federal prosecutors announced last year that they won’t be filing charges in this case, citing a lack of evidence.

“We are here today, not only to honor Shanquella Robinson and her family, but to call for action,” Sue-Ann Robinson said. “We demand, still again and until the end, that authorities take the necessary steps to investigate this case thoroughly and bring those responsible to justice … We will not rest until justice is served for Shanquella Robinson and her family..”

The complaint, a copy of which was obtained by ABC News, claims that Sallamondra Robinson “suffered damages, in excess of $25,000 as a result of the wrongful death” and accuses the FBI of withholding records related to the investigation that the family sought to obtain through FOIA requests. The lawsuit also accuses the State Department and the FBI of negligence.

“The FBI’s standard practice is to decline to comment on pending litigation,” an FBI spokesperson told ABC News on Tuesday.

ABC News reached out to the State Department, but a request for comment was not immediately returned.

Robinson, a 25-year-old Black woman from Charlotte, North Carolina, was found dead in the resort city of San Jose Del Cabo on the southern tip of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula, on Oct. 29 2022 where she and six acquaintances traveled for vacation. According to the lawsuit, the six individuals “were believed to be friends” of Robinson’s.

Shortly after Robinson’s death, a viral video emerged on social media that appeared to show a woman – later identified as one of the “Cabo Six” – beating a naked Robinson in a room, while two spectators recorded the incident.

Sallamondra Robinson previously told ABC News that after her daughter’s death, she got a frantic telephone call from her acquaintances on the trip, claiming that she had died from alcohol poisoning. However, the Mexican Secretariat of Health’s autopsy report and death certificate for Shanquella Robinson, obtained by ABC News, lists her cause of death as “severe spinal cord injury and atlas luxation,” with no mention of alcohol.

The report, which was dated Nov. 4, 2022, also states that the approximate time between injury and death was 15 minutes, while a box asking whether the death was “accidental or violent” was ticked “yes.”

Following Robinson’s death, the FBI opened a probe into the incident, but the bureau announced in April 2023 that federal prosecutors would not seek charges related to Robinson’s death due to a lack of evidence.

U.S. Attorneys Sandra J. Hairston and Dena J. King, who represent the Middle and Western Districts of North Carolina, wrote in a statement that in every case considered for federal prosecution, the government must prove “beyond a reasonable doubt, that a federal crime was committed.”

“Based on the results of the autopsy and after a careful deliberation and review of the investigative materials by both U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, federal prosecutors informed Ms. Robinson’s family today that the available evidence does not support a federal prosecution,” the statement said.

Meanwhile, Mexican authorities investigated the case as femicide, a form of gender-based violence and issued an arrest warrant on Nov. 22, 2023, in relation to Robinson’s death for an alleged perpetrator who was not named, a local prosecutor confirmed to ABC News.

Daniel de la Rosa Anaya, the local prosecutor for the state of Baja California Sur, told ABC News in November 2022, that the warrant was “issued for the crime of femicide,” adding that Mexico is “carrying out all the pertinent procedures such as the Interpol alert and the request for extradition to the United States of America.”

The Attorney General’s Office of Baja California Sur, whose office is investigating, confirmed to ABC News in a statement on Tuesday that the investigation is still open.

“We made the necessary procedures before the United States, it is the authority there that must proceed with the apprehension of the probable perpetrator or perpetrators and put them at the disposal of the Mexican authorities,” the statement said. “Until there is a final sentence, the investigation cannot be closed.”

ABC News’ Sabina Ghebremedhin, Anne Laurent and Alexander Mallin contributed to this report.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify the parties named in the lawsuit.

North Korea balloon trash lands in South Korea president’s compound, security says

omersukrugoksu/Getty Images

(LONDON and SEOUL) — Refuse carried by a North Korean “trash balloon” landed inside the South Korean presidential compound in the capital city of Seoul on Thursday amid rising tensions between the two neighbors.

The South Korean Presidential Security Service “identified trash that blew up in the air and fell in the office compound early this morning,” the service said in a Thursday statement.

“After a safety inspection, the service collected the fallen objects after confirming they do not contain danger or contagiousness,” the service added. “The service is monitoring the situation in cooperation with the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

This is the second time one of North Korea’s trash balloons fell inside the South Korean Presidential Office Compound.

Cross-border balloons have been one element of the recent deterioration in inter-Korean relations, with the period of diplomatic thaw from 2017 giving way to new tensions since the election of conservative South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol in the spring of 2022.

The balloons have been found carrying household waste items including paper, vinyl and plastic bottles, according to the South Korean military. Some trash balloons carried manure.

Several fires have also been reported in metropolitan areas attributed to “heat timers” attached to the balloons.

North Korea launched a total of 5,500 trash balloons at South Korea on 22 occasions from May 28 to Sept. 23 this year, Lee Sung-joon — a spokesperson for South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff — said last month.

Seoul estimated that North Korea spent 550 million won — around $411,600 — to produce the balloons, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported.

Lee said in September after 120 balloons were launched that Seoul would consider military action to down them if necessary. “If North Korea’s continued trash balloons are judged to pose a serious threat to the safety of our citizens or to have crossed the line, the military will take stern military action,” he said.

South Korean civic groups have also launched balloons across the border, much to Pyongyang’s chagrin.

Such balloons often carry rice, essential medicine and leaflets critical of leader Kim Jong Un’s regime. North Korea has repeatedly protested such action and threatened a response.

The frontier region has been particularly tense this month. On Oct. 15, Seoul said North Korea blew up two border roads and deployed “heavy equipment” for “further operations.”

South Korean troops along the border fired warning shots in response, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.

The detonations followed a North Korean warning that it intended to permanently seal off border access routes, cutting rail and road connections and reinforcing defensive fortifications.

The explosions came shortly after Kim ordered his artillery forces — traditionally the most potent threat to the capital Seoul, which sits around 35 miles from the frontier — onto full alert, having accused Seoul of flying drones over Pyongyang.

The face-off on the Korean Peninsula may now spread to Ukraine, where Seoul, Kyiv and Washington, D.C. have accused Pyongyang of deploying troops in support of Russia’s invasion.

Yonhap reported that Seoul is now considering sending weapons to Ukraine in response, having so far only provided humanitarian aid.

Yonhap also said South Korea is considering sending military and intelligence personnel to Ukraine to probe North Korean battlefield performance and help with interrogations of captured North Korean fighters.

ABC News’ Ellie Kaufman contributed to this report.

Why Afghan women are singing to protest Taliban’s ban on women voices

Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty Images

(LONDON) — Gazing into a mirror framed by a vase of bright flowers, Taiba Sulaimani begins to sing. The lyrics, in Farsi, offer a message of hope — I will fly one day, I will be free one day.

Sulaimani is one of hundreds of Afghan women and allies around the world uploading videos of themselves singing on social media platforms. The videos are meant to protest a law passed by the Taliban last week banning women’s voices in public and mandating that they cover their entire bodies.

Women in Afghanistan are not allowed to show any skin, including their eyes. Before this law was passed, however, it was put forth as a recommendation — not enforced — and many women would show the upper half of their faces in public.

The new law “effectively [attempts] to render them into faceless, voiceless shadows,” a spokesperson for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner said on Tuesday.

In response, women like Sulaimani are demonstrating that they refuse to be silenced.

“I recorded the video because I wanted to tell the Taliban, you can’t tell me what to do,” she told ABC News.

Sulaimani, who fled from Afghanistan to Canada three years ago after the Taliban regained power in 2021, didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye to her family. But, even though she currently lives more than 10,000 miles away, the Taliban still tried to intimidate her, warning her by phone that they can’t do anything to her, but that she also shouldn’t forget her family is still in Afghanistan.

But, in defiance, this only motivated Sulaimani further.

“It makes me sure that I have to go ahead with power, even more than ever,” she told ABC News.

Elsewhere, an Afghan woman now living in Norway, Hoda Khamosh, echoed the sentiment.

“We came to the conclusion that every voice can become thousands, showing that we women are not just a few individuals who can be erased,” she said.

Khamosh, who founded the Afghan Women’s Justice Movement, posted a video of herself singing a revolutionary poem saying that if you close your doors on us, we will use the windows to make her voices heard.

“We do not go to the field with a gun, but our voice, our image,” she said. “Protest is a war and a struggle.”

Even women inside Afghanistan are now recording videos of themselves singing, sometimes solo and sometimes in pairs or small groups, yet always wearing burqas that conceal their identities.

Zahra, a journalist in Afghanistan who asked only to be identified by her first name for her safety, said the situation on the ground is rapidly changing. Last week, there were many women outside, but since the passage of the law mandating women to veil their bodies, as well as their voices, she said the streets have emptied of women.

The new law now considers a woman’s voice intimate and they are forbidden to sing, recite or read anything in public. This comes in addition to other regulations forbidding women to leave their houses alone or allowing them to look or speak to men who they’re not related to by blood or marriage.

The combination of these restrictions makes leaving the home impractical at best, and even impossible in some cases. If a person violates the rules, they can be punished with a warning or be arrested, with a Taliban spokesperson saying the new law would “be of great help in the promotion of virtue and the elimination of vice.”

Now, many male family members often instruct their female relatives to stay at home since they don’t want trouble, Zahra said.

“Sometimes we have nightmares that [the Taliban] will come and arrest us,” she said, citing common anecdotes of rape and torture in prisons.

Although hope alone may not seem meaningful to many Afghan women, some now feel empowered by the outpouring of global support in response to the videos of women singing. Now — they hope — the international community will step in and tangibly do something to help protect Afghan women.

“Please don’t leave us alone with the Taliban,” Sulaimani said. “We all need your support.”

West Bengal Assembly in India passes bill mandating life in prison or death penalty for rape convictions

Calcutta High Court advocates hold posters during a protest to condemn the rape and murder of a doctor in Kolkata on August 19, 2024. (DIBYANGSHU SARKAR/AFP via Getty Images)

(LONDON) — After the rape and murder of a junior doctor in a Kolkata hospital led to widespread protests, the West Bengal Assembly has unanimously passed a bill ordering life imprisonment for convicted rapists and the death penalty for rape which results in the death or vegetative state of the victim.

Several other proposals will also be enacted through the Aparajita Woman and Child Bill, including a special task force led by a female officer to accelerate investigations into rape cases, dedicated fast track courts, penalties for delays in investigations and a time limit of 21 days — with a potential 15-day extension — to issue a decision.

The bill will now go to the governor of West Bengal, who is expected to sign it into law.

The new law was inspired following the death of Moumita Debnath, a trainee doctor at R.G. Kar Medical College, who was found dead with injuries indicating rape and strangulation in a seminar room in the hospital on Aug. 9. The murder sparked protests and rallies, drawing tens of thousands of people calling for justice. The suspect in custody, Sanjay Roy, stated he is innocent and is being framed.

Many in India see the bill as a step towards justice and assembly members from the opposition BJP party have lent their full support to its passage.

Sujata, a 55-year-old protester who did not want to be identified by her last name, supported the bill.

“You have to put some examples before the people so they will be aware of the punishment,” she said.

But others saw the bill as a knee-jerk reaction that precludes sustainable change.

“We need to look at not only the act, but what precedes the act,” said Piya Chakraborty, 39, a mental health rights activist.

She believes India needs to focus on larger systemic reforms addressing rape culture and victim blaming.

The current proposal “is an easy way out for the state to say, ‘We’ve got a law,’” said Jhuma Sen, an advocate practicing at the Calcutta High Court and the Supreme Court.

She says parts of the bill are unconstitutional as Indian law forbids the mandatory minimum punishment for any crime as being the death penalty.

Advocates who oppose the death penalty bill say that capital punishment policies do not deter crime. Instead, innocent people are framed and sentenced to death as government bodies rush to reach a verdict and appease the public.

Maitreyi Misra, the director of death penalty mitigation at the non-profit Project 39A, stated that 95% of all Indian death row cases from 2000 to 2015 either ended in acquittals or commutations.

“Procedural safeguards are not being insured,” she said, pointing to flawed interrogations, improper collection of evidence, and lack of representation from lawyers — all common during rushed investigations and trials. “What kind of justice are we aiming to have?”

At the rally that Chakraborty attended soon after she spoke to ABC News, a large blue banner condemned the bill, calling for transparent investigation and justice.

“Justice cannot be reduced to revenge,” she said.