Woman jailed for 20 years over death of Australian surfer brothers and American man in Mexico | Mexico
A Mexican court sentenced a woman to 20 years in prison for her involvement in the April 2024 killings of two Australian surfers and an American at a Baja California surf spot, judicial officials said Thursday.
The victims were Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson, aged 30 and 33 respectively, and US citizen Jack Carter Rhoad, 30.
The three were killed while camping in a remote beachside area in what investigators believe was an attempt to steal their pickup truck.
A Mexican judge in Ensenada sentenced Ary Gisell Silva, 23, who admitted during the trial that he contributed to the theft of tourists’ belongings, which later led to the murders of three surfers.
According to the evidence collected in the prosecutor’s investigation, the young woman allegedly told her three accomplices that “they have good phones and good tires” in their truck before committing the murder.
Silva was found guilty of crimes related to “violent robbery,” according to the decision published Thursday in the public records of the Baja California court on the U.S. border.
According to the evidence presented by the prosecution, Silva was the first person to contact the tourists and noticed that they contained valuable items. This led her to encourage her boyfriend and two other men to carry out the robbery.
Three other people have already been arrested and charged with murder, but are being tried in separate trials.
The surfers were reported missing while camping in Ensenada, where they came from the United States to surf, on April 27, 2024.
According to the prosecution, the attackers “deliberately surprised the surfers and killed them by shooting them with firearms on Sunday, April 28.”
The crime caused great anger and upset in their home country, where an intense search campaign was launched in the media and social networks.
The bodies were found hidden in a cliff on May 3, 2024.
Other foreign tourists visiting the Mexican Pacific region had already been the target of criminal attacks.
In November 2015, two other Australian surfers, Dean Lucas and Adam Coleman, were killed and their bodies cremated while traveling in the state of Sinaloa.
