#surfing — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

S-Reporter @[email protected] · 2026-09-18 · 04:12 UTC

Execution, Not Accident: Chilling Courtroom Revelations in Trial of San Diego Surfers’ Killer

Callum Robinson, Jake Robinson, Jack Carter Rhoad

This week, in a homicide trial in Ensenada, B.C., we’re learning new details about what led three Mexican men to allegedly murder two Australian brothers and their American friend over two years ago.

If you’re not familiar with this case, it stems from what initially seemed to be a botched robbery, in May 2024, at an isolated camping spot south of the Ensenada port. (From the San Ysidro border to Ensenada is about 72 miles.).

The main suspect, Jesús Gerardo García, is said to have fired his 9-millimeter handgun, killing three young surfers, Australian brothers Callum and Jake Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter Rhoad.

The plan, we have since learned, was for the defendants to steal the surfers’ truck because they coveted the tires and cell phone. The truck was later found burned not far from their bodies.

Speculation is that Garcia killed the three surfers to eliminate all witnesses. It was an execution – a single, precise bullet to each of their heads. He and his buddies then dragged the bodies and deposited them in a 50-foot well, where, in addition to the surfers’ bodies, authorities found the remains of another, unaccounted body.

The surfers had ties to San Diego. The Australian Callum Robinson loved living in Ocean Beach. His brother Jake was out visiting him, staying with him in O.B. before they left to go hunting for waves in Baja. Rhoad, a Point Loma resident, graduated from Point Loma Nazarene University in 2014.

Callum Robinson (left) with brother Jake

The trial began September 7. Mexican prosecutors are pursuing sentences of more than 200 years in prison for each of the three defendants.

S-REPORTER is following the trial through the Spanish-language press (Frontera, N+, and Imagen Zea).

Noteworthy developments this week have included the testimony of prosecution witness Silva Raya, the now ex-girlfriend of the main suspect, Jesús Gerardo García, AKA “El Kekas,” The Quesadillas.

According to the testimony, Garcia and Raya first encountered the surfers when they ran out of gas. The Robinson brothers and Rhoad had pulled over to share their gas. That was when Raya noticed the truck tires and the cell phones inside the visitors’ truck. Raya, who was sentenced in 2025 to 20 years for her role, set events in motion when she urged Garcia to rob them, though she testified that she never thought he’d hurt them. That’s hard to believe given that she knew he was violent, referring to him in court as sicario, meaning, in Mexican Spanish, a hitman, contract killer, or cartel enforcer. To be clear, prosecutors maintain that the triple homicide was not cartel-related but an opportunistic robbery for the truck’s tires.

Raya told the judge (they don’t do juries in Mexico) that the next day, her then-boyfriend García showed up at her home with the surfers’ pickup truck. She saw traces of blood. She testified that Garcia boasted about using his 9-millimeter handgun to methodically put a bullet in three human beings’ heads. When the surfers saw his gun, they started tossing their money and belongings to him, in hopes that Garcia would spare their lives. He didn’t. Raya said: “They were kind people who didn’t deserve to die, much less the way they did.”

This account seems to contradict what the Attorney General and prosecutors had initially believed, that the surfers were shot because they resisted when Garcia tried to steal the tires and other parts of their pickup truck. Instead, it appears to have been an efficient, one-sided, cold-blooded execution.

When Ensenada police took Raya into custody in 2024, they found her driving Garcia’s truck which had been outfitted with new tires and parts stripped from the surfers’ truck. In her possession: a cell phone and her crystal meth. Police checked the phone screen and there it was, a photo of one of the missing surfers. That was enough to detain her.

Also revelatory was testimony this week from Ramón, stepson of Garcia. Sitting face covered in an adjoining room, he said his stepdad took him to the crime scene, along with the other two defendants. He stayed in the car listening to music when he heard what he termed a “commotion.” He testified that he “heard a ruckus, got out of the pickup truck, and took off like a bat out of hell to my uncle’s house and hid in the bathroom.”

Ramón explained that after the triple homicide, the defendants were worried he would contact the police. They told him that “the same thing that happened to the gringos” would happen to him if he said anything. Garcia, who hadn’t yet disposed of the bodies, threatened his stepson inside the home they shared. Ramón described him as a “violent man” who once attacked his mother. She also testified, corroborating her son’s version of events.

Garcia, along with the two other defendants, Irineo Francisco N., and Ángel Jesús N., have pleaded not guilty to charges of aggravated homicide, aggravated robbery, and grand theft auto.

It should be noted that violent crimes against Americans in Ensenada are very rare. The bulk of Ensenada’s violent crime occurs far away from the malecon (boardwalk), cruise ship docks, and the Valle de Guadalupe wine region.

It typically happens in outlying neighborhoods. Tourists are rarely the target of organized crime.

But when you leave downtown Ensenada, by the port, and venture to some of the more isolated areas, like the surfers did, the risk of being robbed increases. The moderator of the local Talk Baja internet forum recently wrote that “the reality is, the dangers of traveling to and camping in remote areas are outweighing the benefits.”

The trial is expected to wrapped up by the end of Sept.

Editor’s Note: Read “Beach bar attacks expose San Diego’s dark underbelly“

Thank you for supporting S-REPORTER, your hyper-local and independent source for San Diego news

#Australia #Ensenada #murder #OceanBeach #SanDiego #Surfing #Trial

#australia #ensenada #murder #oceanbeach #sandiego #surfing