Authorities allege killings were part of attempted pickup truck robbery
The trial of three men accused of killing two Australian brothers and an American friend during a 2024 surfing trip to Mexico began Monday in the port city of Ensenada. The defendants face allegations that they shot the victims and dumped their bodies in a cliff-top shaft after an attempted robbery, according to The Guardian.
Australian brothers Jake Robinson, 30, and Callum Robinson, 33, both from Perth, were camping with their 30-year-old American friend Jack Carter Rhoad in a remote beachside area of Baja California state when they were killed in April 2024. Their bodies were found in the shaft several days after they went missing. They had gunshot wounds to their heads. A pickup truck believed to belong to the victims was found burned nearby, authorities said.
The Robinson brothers’ parents, Debra and Martin Robinson, traveled from Australia to attend the trial’s opening day. Debra Robinson stared at the accused in the courtroom before bursting into tears, The Guardian reported.
“It’s about representing our sons, being here for them. I know they want us to be here,” Martin Robinson told reporters outside the court. “We want to find out what happened. We want to find out why.”
Three witnesses appeared before the court on Monday, including the stepson of one of the defendants. Testifying from an adjoining room with his face concealed, he said he accompanied the accused to the crime scene and waited nearby when the “commotion” began.
“I heard a lot of noise,” the stepson said, according to The Guardian. He said he ran away but rejoined the group after they called him back.
The stepson further testified that the accused warned him “the same thing that happened to the gringos would happen to him” if he disclosed the attack, The Guardian reported. The stepson also described his stepfather as violent.
Callum Robinson had played professional lacrosse in the U.S., while his brother Jake was pursuing a career in medicine, The Guardian reported. Rhoad was killed a few months before he was set to marry.
The killings sparked outrage and grief in Australia and the United States, where the surfers’ friends and families organized a major social media search for the victims’ bodies, The Guardian reported.
Baja California is one of Mexico’s most violent states, plagued by organized crime and drug trafficking, although cartel activity does not usually affect tourists, The Guardian reported. Other foreign visitors have been targeted in criminal attacks on Mexico’s Pacific coast; two Australian surfers, Dean Lucas and Adam Coleman, were murdered in 2015 while traveling through the northwestern state of Sinaloa. Their bodies were later burned.