  We study the collision of two Reissner-Nordstr\"om gravitational shock waves
in AdS and show that the charge completely prevents the formation of marginally
trapped surfaces of the Penrose type with topology S^(D-2), independently of
the energy and the value of the impact parameter. In the case of head-on
collisions, a numerical analysis shows that no trapped surfaces with topology
S^1 \times S^(D-3) form either.
