Shanquella Robinson, a 25-year-old woman from Charlotte, traveled to the resort city of San Jose del Cabo, Mexico, on Oct. 28 with six friends to celebrate one of their birthdays. Less than 24 hours later she was found dead.
Three weeks later, Robinson’s family just wants answers. Thus far, they feel they’ve only been given the runaround by authorities and conflicting stories from her friends about what led to her death.
“They said she wasn’t feeling well. She had alcohol poisoning,” Robinson’s mother, Sallamondra, told WSOC-TV last week, recalling an anxious call she got from one of her daughter’s friends. “They couldn’t get a pulse. Each one of the people that was there with her was telling different stories.”
Things never added up to Sallamondra. She had just talked to her daughter on Friday evening, before her daughter was going to dinner with the group. Hours later, she was no longer alive.
“She said, ‘Well, mother, I’m getting ready to eat,'” Sallamondra told ABC News. “I said, ‘Well, OK. Enjoy yourself. Have a good time. And I love you and I will talk to you tomorrow.’”
It wasn’t until Sallamondra received an autopsy report from the Mexican Secretariat of Health that the family learned Robinson had suffered a broken neck and a cracked spine. No mention of alcohol was included in the report. In a death certificate, obtained by Queens City News, Robinson’s death was attributed to a “severe spinal cord injury and atlas luxation,” meaning that her first vertebra was loosened or detached from the base of her skull. The approximate time between injury and death was determined to be 15 minutes, the report noted. The certificate also stated that Robinson was found unconscious in the living room of a villa by a maid.
“I probably won’t be at ease until someone’s arrested,” Sallamondra told the outlet.
The group had stayed at a villa property listed on cabovillas.com. A spokesperson for the company told WJZY that the group had called for help from the company’s concierge, who enlisted a doctor to give Robinson CPR. She was pronounced dead at 3 p.m. that day.
“We are working diligently to determine the facts surrounding this incident, which is currently being investigated as an isolated criminal matter that happened involving guests at a private villa located in Los Cabos,” the spokesperson told Rolling Stone in a statement. “Additional information will be made available by local public safety authorities when the investigation is complete.”