‘Our world stopped’: Parents of slain Australian surfers ask for maximum sentence

Ensenada: The devastated parents of Jake and Callum Robinson said their world “stopped” when their sons were shot dead in Mexico two years ago, as they made an emotional plea for the three accused killers to be locked up forever.

Martin Robinson held his wife Debra as she told the court on the final day of the murder trial that “our lives will never be the same without them, but our love for them will never fade”.

“Callum and Jake were our only children,” Debra said. “Their loss has taken from us not only the sons we loved, but the future we imagined with them.

“The day Callum and Jake were murdered, our world stopped … We never want another family to experience the devastation and suffering that has been inflicted on ours.”

The Robinsons have attended every day of the trial in Ensenada, on Mexico’s Pacific Coast, which began in early September. After five weeks, judge Raúl Hernández Arellano is set to rule on the guilt of the three accused murderers on Friday afternoon (Mexico time).

The brothers and their American friend Carter Rhoad disappeared in late April 2024 while camping in a remote surfing spot in Baja California, a region also known for drug cartels and gang violence. Their bodies were discovered days later down a well, with gunshot wounds.

Prosecutors alleged the three tourists were killed in a robbery gone wrong. Last year, the then girlfriend of the alleged ringleader was sentenced to 20 years in prison for instigating the theft that allegedly led to the killings.

At Thursday’s hearing, which lasted just over six hours and finished at 7.30pm (Ensenada time), both sides delivered their closing arguments and made the case to preserve or exclude evidence presented at the trial.

The three accused men sat in a row behind their lawyers, wearing orange prison jumpsuits with their ankles shackled. They were just metres from the Robinsons, as they have been throughout the trial.

The court heard that the Robinson brothers had pleaded for mercy in the moments before they were killed – a piece of evidence Debra Robinson addressed in her statement to the judge.

She said her sons showed “kindness and trust, even in their final hours”, and yet were still “treated with such cruelty”.

“To know that their pleas were ignored is something we will carry for the rest of our lives,” she said. “It is also especially painful to know that their pleas for mercy were laughed at later.”

Callum was a talented lacrosse player who had played professionally in the US, an avid surfer and a coach. Jake was a “compassionate and dedicated doctor”, Debra told the court, and she thought he would be there to take care of his parents as they grew older.

“Callum and Jake’s lives mattered,” she said. “Their futures mattered. They were loved deeply and had so much more left to give to their families, friends and communities.”