A friend, two brothers, and I crossed into Mexico from the US last month to check out the famous surf breaks in Baja California. One of the brothers, 33-year-old Callum Robinson, put pictures of the men online. The pictures show them drinking coffee and looking out at the ocean, eating street tacos, and sitting on a roof deck with beers.
The friends were going to stay at an Airbnb in Rosarito Beach last weekend after camping on a remote beach south of Ensenada first. But they never showed up. The last time the men’s family heard from them was April 27.
Since they went missing in one of Mexico’s most dangerous states, the local government, the FBI, and the Mexican troops have all joined the search.
“We are looking for them on land and at sea,” María Elena Andrade Ramírez, the attorney general for Baja California, said Thursday. “We are making every effort.”
A number of disturbing signs suggested that the guys may have been victims of violence.
The police said they had found the burned-out pieces of the white Chevrolet pickup the men were driving and found one of the men’s cellphones. Officials have questioned three people about the case, Andrade said, but she didn’t say if they are suspects.
On Friday, several news sites quoted officials who did not want to be named as saying that three bodies had been found near where the surfers went missing. A spokeswoman for the office of the attorney general for Baja California said he could not confirm this.
Robinson plays lacrosse, and his brother Jake is a doctor and 30 years old. Both are from Australia. Carter Rhoad, their 30-year-old friend, is from Atlanta and started an online clothing store in San Diego, according to his Facebook page.
Police say the last time they saw the group was near Santo Tomas, which is about 70 miles south of Rosarito.
Jake and Callum’s mom, Debra Robinson, asked for help on social media after days of not hearing from her kids. She said that Callum has diabetes and that she needed help right away. “Things are very bad right now,” she said.
Large waves and a rough shore in Baja California have long drawn surfers from north of the border. However, Serge Dedina, an experienced surfer in the area and the head of Wildcoast, an environmental group that works in Baja, said that going to remote places makes them more likely to be a victim of crime.
He said that he often tells surfers who come to the area to stay with other people, not drive at night, and sleep near fish camps. The man tells them, “If you can help it, don’t go out alone.”
Violence has been rampant in the state for the past few years, and a lot of it has to do with the drug trade. The state of Baja California had one of the highest rates of murder in Mexico last year, with 2,116 deaths.
In his last year in office, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador promised to make the country less violent. But even though the number of murders in the country has gone down a little over his six-year term, they are still very close to all-time highs.
