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.
Shanquella’s mother, Salamondra Robinson, told CBS News’ Anne-Marie Green and Dana Jacobson that investigators in Mexico were looking into her daughter’s death as a murder.
“I was glad to hear that,” she said.
Salamondra said she was initially told by Shanquella’s friends that she had gotten sick with alcohol poisoning. But later on, she learned there was a fight, and an autopsy found she had injuries to her spinal cord and neck.
The autopsy showed that “her death had nothing to do with alcohol,” Salamondra said.