A local court has sentenced Ari Gisel García, a young woman arrested in early May last year for participating in the murder of three foreign surfers, whose bodies appeared near Ensenada, Baja California, to 20 years in prison. García, 23, accepted the sentence in an abbreviated trial, in which he took charges of robbery with violence and incitement against the three surfers. You will also have to pay around 54,000 pesos. The Baja California prosecutor based the accusation on the statement of a witness to the crime, who heard the young woman say “bring me a good cell phone and some good tires.” collection”, in relation to the young man’s vehicle, parked in the tourist area of Punta San José, about two hours’ drive from Ensenada.
The case soon raised alarm bells internationally. Australian brothers Callum and Jake Robinson, accompanied by Australian Jack Carter Rhoad, crossed the US border into Baja California on April 26, 2024, and went missing the next day. It took authorities eight days to find the decomposing bodies of the three surfers in a well and for their families to identify them. Each of the young men received a bullet in the head. The crime led the United States to issue new warnings for citizens traveling to Mexico and Australia expressed its shock at an “absolutely horrendous experience”.
A few days after the disappearances, the authorities arrested three alleged perpetrators. The main one is Jesús Gerardo, alias The Kekaswho already had a criminal record and a charge of enforced disappearance. Next to him was Ari Gisel, his partner at the time, as well as his brother. García was later discovered with the cell phone of one of the three surfers.
In the initial investigations, the Prosecutor’s Office hypothesized that what happened began with an attack, which soon led to the execution of the three surfers. From these investigations it emerged that the three boys had decided to camp on this cliff located in Punta San José, the place from which the attackers had passed in a white truck. “They approached with the intention of seizing the vehicle, removing the tires or other parts, to put them back in their collectionan older model. When they approached and surprised these people, there was definitely resistance on their part and the attackers pulled out a firearm and deprived them of their lives,” said Baja California prosecutor Elena Andrade.
The case reached the Australian federal treasurer, Jim Chalmers, who stated in early May that year that the identification of the bodies of Callum and Jake Robinson was “frankly horrendous news”. “I think the hearts of the whole country go out to all of his loved ones. It was an absolutely horrible, absolutely horrible experience and our thoughts are with all of them,” he said. Comments which were soon joined by other voices, such as that of Roger Cook, Prime Minister of the two brothers’ birthplace, Western Australia: “All Western Australians are suffering as we hear further aspects of this story, the violence to which they have been exposed and, of course, the loss of life.”
On May 5, 2024, social unrest led 500 people, most of them surfers, to demonstrate in Ensenada to demand greater safety. In the group where the news of the boys’ disappearance was broken, Talk Baja, they began sharing safety tips and places of reference for camping.
