The grief-stricken family of influencer Ashly Robinson says her fiancé stopped communicating with them after she died while they were on a safari trip to Tanzania.
Robinson, a 31-year-old who shared content online under the name Ashlee Jenae, had been in Zanzibar with her fiancé Joe McCann when she was “found unconscious in her villa and rushed to a local hospital, where her death was confirmed hours later,” her family said in an April 12 statement on Instagram.
Local police said in a statement that they believed Robinson died by suicide following a “misunderstanding” between Robinson and McCann, which led to the pair being separated into different hotel rooms. Robinson’s family noted in their statement that her death was “suspicious.”
Several of her relatives later told TMZ that they had not heard from McCann since.
“We just think that it’s very odd that our daughter was traveling with Joe, and we don’t hear anything from Joe. To me, that’s very odd,” one of her family members told TMZ.
Another relative added that there has been “no communication” since her death.
Robinson, a content creator based in Oregon who had over 124,000 Instagram followers, was celebrating her 31st birthday on a safari vacation with her boyfriend of one year on April 5. Photos and videos shared to her account show the pair walking with a lion before McCann knelt on one knee and proposed.
“She was starting the next chapter of her life. She called us to FaceTime us to share with us her travel and her vacation,” her mother, Yolanda Denise Endres, told Action News.
On April 8, Robinson called her mother and said that she and her fiancé were arguing and had moved into separate rooms. The next day, Endres said she received a call from her fiancé.
“He told me that Ashly did something to herself and she was being taken to the hospital, and he told me she was stable,” Endres said. “I said what happened, and he told me, it had been 11 hours prior.”
Hours later, the hotel where the couple had been staying notified Robinson’s family of her death.
Robinson had a mark around her neck at the time of her death, according to a hospital report, which also claimed that her fiancé “found she hung herself on the door.”
She was later taken to a second hospital, which listed her cause of death as cerebral hypoxia by strangulation and suffocation.
“She’s never done anything that would ever ever lead me to believe that she would do something to harm herself like that. She was happy,” Endres said.
The family says they have been in contact with authorities in Tanzania, but have not received any information beyond confirmation that her death remains under investigation.
Police in Zanzibar told local outlet Mwanachi that they were not planning on detaining or pursuing legal action against McCann. He has not been accused of any wrongdoing by authorities.
“She was loved. She was not just going to be discarded and forgotten about,” Endres said.
Her family says they are considering traveling to Zanzibar in search of answers.
If you are based in the USA, and you or someone you know needs mental health assistance right now, call or text 988 or visit 988lifeline.org to access online chat from the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. This is a free, confidential crisis hotline that is available to everyone 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you are in another country, you can go to www.befrienders.org to find a helpline near you. In the UK, people having mental health crises can contact the Samaritans at 116 123 or jo@samaritans.org
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