• The death of 25-year-old Shankwella Robinson in Mexico six months ago remains a mystery.
• A video on the Internet showed her being beaten, but the FBI dropped the investigation.
• Her family is calling on the Biden administration to intervene, seeking the extradition of the suspected American to Mexico.

For Shankwella Robinson’s family, the past six months have brought nothing but misery.

On October 28, 2022, a 25-year-old from Charlotte, North Carolina went to Mexico with six university friends for a short vacation.

The next day, Robinson was found unconscious in the living room of a rented villa in San Jose del Cabo, a resort town on the southern tip of Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula. She died on the same day.

According to her father, Bernard Robinson, some of her friends said she died from alcohol poisoning. But an autopsy released in November found that his daughter died from “severe spinal cord injury and atlas luxation,” a condition in which there is unstable or excessive movement in the first two cervical vertebrae 15 minutes after the injury.

Five days later, a 20-second video began circulating on the Internet, in which a woman, identified by her family as Robinson, was repeatedly punched and kicked by another woman. A man nearby can be heard saying, “Quella, can you at least fight back?”

The clip went viral and the hashtag #justiceforquella went viral on social media. It was then that the search for truth and justice began in her family. However, they are still waiting. Why?

Shattered hopes

Robinson’s mysterious death and video led to an investigation by Mexican authorities as well as the FBI.

Her family continued to demand justice for her, and in March their attorney sent a letter to President Joe Biden urging them to do more and, most importantly, find those responsible for her alleged murder.

Attorney Sue-Anne Robinson, representing the family, has publicly called for a closer examination of the circumstances of the death.

Despite the family’s pleas, this month the FBI and federal prosecutors announced they had completed their investigation and would not prosecute.

“As in every case pending federal prosecution, the government must prove beyond reasonable doubt that a federal crime has been committed. Based on the results of the autopsy and after careful discussion and review of the investigative materials by both U.S. Attorneys. “The U.S. Attorney’s Office told Ms. Robinson’s family today that the available evidence does not support a federal prosecution,” U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of North Carolina said in a statement.

It comes just months after local Mexican prosecutor Antonio López Rodriguez announced that the case was being investigated as a murder and called for the extradition of an alleged American citizen.

In November 2022, the secrecy of the case intensified as the Mexican police shared a new report contradicting the original autopsy. They said that Robinson may have been alive for hours and treated by a doctor before authorities arrived and pronounced her dead. A doctor told authorities that Robinson’s friends insisted she be cared for at home rather than in the hospital.

“This case has been fully clarified, we even have a court order, we have an arrest warrant issued for the crime of femicide to the detriment of the victim and against the alleged perpetrator, her friend, who is the direct aggressor,” the state prosecutor said. Daniel de la Rosa Anaya told ABC News at the time.

“In fact, it was not a quarrel, but direct aggression. We are following all relevant procedures, such as the Interpol notification and the request for extradition to the United States of America. It’s about two Americans, a victim and a perpetrator. .”

This was told by Andre Uther, a representative of the law firm Frontline Law Firm, founded by Sue-Anne Robinson. Newsweek why the family continues to campaign for diplomatic intervention.

“What happened to Shankwella is captured on video: she was brutally attacked and beaten, while naked, by one of the fellow travelers, while we hear others laughing and watching,” he said.

“[The family] still insist on a high level of diplomatic intervention in order to move forward the extradition of the aggressor identified by the Mexican authorities. This requires the State Department to approve a request from Mexican authorities to move the process forward.

“The FBI publicly announced that the case was closed, but refused to release the relevant records, saying that the case was not officially closed.

“They informed the family that they were still working on translating documents from the Mexican authorities in Cabo into English. This is just another wake up call for the family regarding this FBI investigative process.

“Attorney Sue-Anne Robinson traveled to Mexico on a fact-finding mission and was in direct contact with the Mexican authorities, who shared some of their investigative files and also said that this case was of high priority to them and that they had completed and submitted all documents required to request extradition to Interpol and the FBI.”

Shankwella Robinson’s mother, Salamondra Robinson, complained about the efforts being made by the FBI in the investigation.

Sharing a photo of herself and her daughter on Instagram on Dec. 3, she wrote: “The FBI is not doing enough to put Shankwella’s attackers behind bars. I’m just trying to wait for someone to be arrested.” The FBI hasn’t released anything yet.

“Shankwella’s attackers looked me straight in the face and said that there was no fight in Cabo Mexico. I think they’re on the run.”

A tangle around extradition

One of the current issues in the investigation was related to the potential extradition of an American citizen to Mexico.

Newsweek spoke with Jacques Hartmann, Professor of Law at the University of Dundee, Scotland, about the complexities of extradition and how it applies to the Robinson case.

“International law does not allow states to apply their laws abroad. This means, among other things, that Mexico cannot arrest people in the US,” he said.

“Extradition is a formal process where one country asks another country to return a person to stand trial (or serve a sentence).

“There is no general obligation of extradition in international law, and therefore the obligation of extradition must be established in the treaty. Mexico and the United States have long signed such a treaty. The first extradition treaty was concluded in 1892. This treaty has been superseded by another treaty. treaty of 1978, which was amended in 1997”.

He added that under this treaty, murder remains the first extraditable offense and that this applies to the Robinson case.

He also talked about what would follow if America agreed to cooperate with Mexico in its extradition quest.

Hartmann said: “After this person is located and arrested in the US, the case moves into the judicial phase. At the judicial stage, the court will determine whether the request for extradition complies with the requirements of the 1978 treaty.”

“If the court decides that the extradition can be allowed, the case goes into the execution phase. Both the judgment and the extradition order are subject to appeal at several levels.”

Paul Arnell, an assistant professor at Robert Gordon University, said political issues could hinder the extradition process even though the US and Mexico are allies.

“Political considerations may influence the decision to request a person and the decision whether or not to agree to the transfer of a person. Thus, the process depends to some extent on the general relations between countries. If, say, Mexico refused to send people to the US, then, in turn, the US can act in a similar way,” he said. Newsweek.

He added that although the FBI closed the investigation, this does not mean that there is no chance of extraditing the American.

“If the requested person had been prosecuted in the US, then yes, she could not be extradited, regardless of whether she was convicted or acquitted,” he said.

On the other hand, Hartmann said he thought the chances of extraditing the wanted American were very slim.

“There is no obligation to extradite US citizens to Mexico. Litigation in the US is optional. At the same time, it is not even necessary to initiate a criminal case,” he said.

As for the family’s call to action, Hartmann suggested there was little they could do without support at a higher level.

“There is very little action a family can take to achieve extradition as this is a decision between sovereign states,” he said.

This was announced by the representative of the State Department Newsweek: “The State Department has no higher priority than the safety of US citizens abroad. The Department maintains a thorough investigation into the circumstances of this incident and is closely following the local authorities’ investigation.

“The Department does not provide confirmation or comment on investigations due to privacy and law enforcement concerns. In accordance with longstanding practice, the Department does not comment on extradition matters. We have no further comments at this time.”

Hartmann said the family may consider filing a civil lawsuit regarding the death.

While it’s unclear if the family would consider this option, the GoFundMe page created after Robinson’s death has served its purpose.

Robinson’s sister, Quilla Long, created a page on the family’s financial burden and legal costs. After almost 7,000 donations, the family was able to exceed their $400,000 goal and continue to receive donations to help the family.

manner MoonlightWinning Best Picture at the Oscars may have been strange and shocking, but it upset the expected favorite. la la country, the Barry Jenkins film set a number of milestones. It is the lowest-budget film to win the award since Delbert Mann. Marty in 1955; when adjusted for inflation, this is the lowest figure ever. It is the first film focusing on an LGBT character to win Best Picture and the first film to have an all-color cast. Moreover, it is incredible that Moonlight beat la la country simply because the latter seemed like a film meant for Academy voters—a well-made original musical about artistry and Hollywood dreams, laced with nostalgia for the golden age of the film industry.

But maybe it shouldn’t be so surprising that Moonlight took Best Film. It’s a terrific film, but in some ways it fits the model that the Academy has been leaning towards in recent years. For decades, it was very unusual for the film with the most awards of the night to lose the Best Picture race. But in recent years, that has been the norm. For decades, the gap between Best Picture and Best Director (as happened last night at the Oscars) has been a relative rarity; this has happened 8 times in the last 20 years. Moonlight is a unique film that tells a story that the Oscars have largely ignored throughout its history — but it’s also a smaller, more personal story that voters have begun to warm up to.

Moonlight It won three Oscars this year: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Mahershala Ali) and Best Adapted Screenplay for Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney. Last year’s Best Film winner spotlight took only two trophies, and in 2015 Birdman won four. One year before 12 years of slavery won three, as argon in 2013. In each case, there was a different, more lavish production that won just as many, if not more, trophies: survivor, Hotel Grand Budapest, gravityAnd Life of Pirespectively (with all but Budapest winning the nomination “Best Director”, but not “Best Film”). la la country seems to belong to this new ticket-sharing norm, where voters attribute a bunch of technical victories to a brilliant leader but give away the best film to a more critically acclaimed, smaller production.

Again, this is not to be discounted Moonlightfateful triumph. Although I like movies spotlight another Birdman were independent works, they were made on a much larger budget and distributed by the more established independent divisions of major studios (Moonlightthe distributor was A24, a company founded just five years ago a name that quickly became one of the most respected in American feature films). However, in the last decade, only one major studio has won the Best Picture award, Warner Bros. argon another Renegades). As Hollywood’s major production companies ditched prestige films to focus more on big franchises, the Best Picture nominations list is mostly filled with independent and “medium” companies (with Amazon’s streaming service making a breakthrough this year for Manchester by the sea).

If things have already gone in this direction, then Moonlight may be the beginning of even greater nautical changes. Of nine nominees for this year’s Best Picture, it was the highest grossing ($22 million in its fourth month of release, behind the next lowest). Hell or high water with $27 million). The Oscars used to evoke a certain reverence for well-reviewed films that made a splash. It’s like choosing a consensus, like beautiful mind, gladiator, Brave heart, another Forrest Gump took the prize over more famous films. la la country fits well in this form, but this form can be broken.

It helps Moonlight was widely known, causing enthusiastic critical raves that happen once in a generation, not once a year. In addition, it was a beautifully shot film on all levels, with support from the broader Academy chapters (it was nominated for music, cinematography and editing, as well as pending writing, acting and directing accolades). This is critical to winning Best Picture because people from every branch of the Academy vote for the winners, and this is what has kept smaller, less technically impressive indie films from winning in the past. Perhaps next year the trophy will go to some major epic hitting the box office, like a Christopher Nolan movie. Dunkirk, and this recent pattern will be reversed. Anyway, MoonlightThe victory is so shocking that it will be remembered forever. Whether this is Oscar’s magical anomaly or a sign of profound change at the Academy remains to be seen now.

What started as an ordinary bus ride home from school ended with one high school student from Michigan hailed as a national hero for stopping his school bus to a safe stop after the driver passed out.

Dillon Reeves, a seventh grader at Lois E. Carter High School in Warren, Michigan, was one of dozens of students on the bus home from school Wednesday afternoon, officials said. Around 3 p.m., an unidentified bus driver radioed to the transport base that she was “very dizzy” and needed to stop, initiating a process allowing the dispatcher to direct her to another driver.

But when the driver slowed down, she lost consciousness. Robert D. Livernois, superintendent of Warren Unified School District, said at a press conference on Thursday. According to him, the bus began to roll in the direction of oncoming traffic.

Dillon sat about five rows behind the driver and quickly dropped his backpack, “ran to the front of the bus, grabbed the steering wheel and stopped the bus in the middle of the road,” Livernois said.

“In my 35+ years of education, this was an exceptional act of courage and maturity on his part,” Livernois said.

The video shows Dillon grabbing the steering wheel and calmly and slowly taking control of the brakes. Children panic and scream in the background. “He had enough funds to move slowly, probably in anticipation of the bus being full of passengers,” Livernois said.

After the bus stopped, Dillon told the other students to call 911.

Livernois said a man walking down the street and a woman two cars away from the bus came to the aid of the students. The man escorted the driver along with Dillon while the woman helped the children out through the back door so that they would not witness their driver’s misfortune.

Livernois said police and firefighters arrived at the scene within four minutes. No injuries were reported among students, and no damage to the bus was reported, he said.

The driver started work in July and was “one of our best,” the superintendent said. According to the school, she strictly followed the protocol, warning the base to send a backup driver. It also emerged that she took her foot off the accelerator as she prepared to stop, Livernois said.

Skip McAdams, Warren’s fire commissioner, said the driver was semi-conscious when firefighters arrived at the scene. She became more “focused and focused” when she was taken to the hospital and placed on an ECG monitor and oxygen along with an IV. “She didn’t remember the actual incident, but she does remember that she wasn’t well before the incident,” McAdams said, adding that her vitals were stable.

The 40-year-old driver remained in the hospital as of Thursday and was undergoing examination and observation. Livernois said she had no fainting spells and passed the mandatory medical examination from the Department of Transportation. The driver is undergoing a drug test as required by federal law, Livernois said.

Steve and Ireta Reeves, Dillon’s parents, praised their son’s actions and called him a hero. Dillon has been riding his father’s lap on back roads and driveways since he was 4, said Steve Reeves, who described his son as “very attentive to his surroundings.”

Ireta Reeves said that when she asked Dillon how he knew what to do, he replied, “I’m watching [the driver] do it every day.”

The school board plans to hold an awards ceremony for Dillon, Livernois said.