Tequila Long, the grieving sister of Shanquella Robinson, is calling out her sibling’s friends for telling conflicting stories about the death of the young woman who lost her life after going to Mexico with the group. Speaking with Essence, Long said she heard there was a fight on the trip before Robinson’s death. The devastated sibling also said she heard from another male friend who said Robinson died of alcohol poisoning.
“I was more believing the dude that she went on the trip with because that was her best friend. So I didn’t think that he would be malicious about anything. I didn’t think that he would tell us a lie. I trusted him. So I took his word for it more than anything, and he said it was alcohol poisoning,” Long told Essence.
Three of Robinson’s friends came to the family’s home in Charlotte, North Carolina, and spoke with the sisters’ mom, Salamondra Robinson.
“They came to meet my mother to talk about the incident that happened in Cabo,” Long said. “The two young ladies, and the male, told us that there wasn’t any type of fighting going on. That they believed what the medic told him, that it was alcohol poisoning. We asked him about the fight because we was hearing from other people that they was out there fighting her, they had jumped on her out there. So they all was giving us a story, a lie, until the video surfaced.”
As Blavity previously reported, a video that appeared to be recorded in a hotel room during the trip showed Robinson being punched and thrown to the floor by another woman. Another person can be heard in the background, saying, “Quella, can you at least fight back?”
The U.S. State Department later released a statement, saying there was no clear evidence of foul play. The Queen City News also obtained a death certificate that stated Robinson had sustained a “severe spinal cord injury.”
In a statement to Essence, Baja California Sur’s prosecutor’s office said an arrest warrant has been issued for “femicide,” which involves the killing of a woman due to her gender, according to CNN.
The state prosecutor’s office said the next steps are for national authorities, including Mexico’s attorney general and minister of foreign affairs, to carry out the extradition process. The process involves the U.S. delivering a suspect to Mexican authorities.
