The mother of two Australian surfers killed in a suspected carjacking in Mexico fought back tears as she said “the world has become a darker place for us”.
Debra Robinson, delivered a moving statement alongside her husband Martin, as she said their “hearts were broken” after the deaths of their sons Callum, 33, and Jake, 30, in Baja California.
Mrs Robinson also mourned the American who was killed with them, Jack Carter Rhoad.
Speaking on a beach in San Diego she said: “They were young men enjoying their passion of surfing together.”
“Live bigger, shine brighter, and love harder in their memory,” she added.
A Mexican man has been charged with “forced disappearance” and is expected to be charged with the three murders.
Another man and a woman caught with drugs have been detained for their suspected involvement.
The three friends disappeared on 27 April while on a surfing and camping trip near Ensenada.
A desperate search ended when their bodies were found dumped in a cliffside well on Friday about four miles away from where they had been attacked at a beachside campsite.
Each man had been killed by a gunshot to the head, according to local authorities.
A fourth body was also found in the well but had been there longer and was unconnected to the case, they said.
Callum was a member of Australia's national lacrosse team and a resident of San Diego, just across the US-Mexico border from Baja California. Jake, an avid traveller, left Australia about two weeks before the incident. Together, the pair attended the Coachella music festival in California before crossing the state's border into Mexico.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told a radio station in the Robinsons' home town of Perth in Western Australia state that every parent felt for the family's loss.
"I think the whole nation's heart goes out to the parents of Callum and Jake Robinson. It is every parent's worst nightmare to lose a son or a daughter. To lose these two brothers is just awful and my deepest sympathies and condolences and I'm sure the whole nation's with the parents and with the other family and friends of these two fine young Australians," Albanese told Perth Radio 6PR.
Albanese said he was reminded of when his only child Nathan Albanese traveled last year at the age of 22 to a musical festival in Spain.
"You do worry, but you think as well that's part of the Australian right of passage, is traveling around with a backpack and meeting people and it's how you grow as a person as well so you want to encourage them," Albanese said.
In 2015, two Australian surfers, Adam Coleman and Dean Lucas, were killed in western Sinaloa state, across the Gulf of California - also known as the Sea of Cortez - from the Baja peninsula. Authorities said they were victims of highway bandits. Three suspects were arrested in that case.
