By MARK STEVENSON Associated Press
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican prosecutors said Thursday they have opened an investigation into the death of a U.S. woman seen being beaten in a video that has gone viral.
Prosecutors in the state of Baja California Sur said in a statement they are investigating the death of a woman they identified only as a foreigner, at a resort development in the town of San Jose del Cabo.
A state official who was not authorized to be quoted by name confirmed the victim was Shanquella Robinson. The official confirmed that the group she had been traveling with had since left Mexico.
A video apparently taped at a luxury villa in San Jose del Cabo shows one woman, apparently an American, beating another woman.
The video has been reposted many times on social media sites. In it, a man with an American accent can be heard saying “Can you at least fight back?” The man did not appear to intervene in the beating.
Prosecutors said police found Robinson dead at the villa on Oct. 29.
The Charlotte, North Carolina station Queen City News published a report saying Robinson died of a severe spinal chord injury.
Mexican officials said they could not confirm that was the cause of death, because it was part of an ongoing investigation.
The video raised questions about why nobody intervened in the purported beating, or why people she was traveling with would have beaten her.
In another case in a different part of Baja California Sur, prosecutors said they had arrested three men and one woman in the Oct. 25 disappearance of another American, identified as Rodney Davis, 73.
Davis was last seen near El Juncalito beach in the township of Loreto, well to the north of San Jose del Cabo.
The three suspects face kidnapping charges. Davis’s body was found two days later on a nearby highway.
