On the eve of what should have been his high school graduation, 17-year-old Shadi Adi Najjar was found shot to death alongside his friend, 18-year-old Artem S. Ziberov, in a parked car in Montgomery Village, Maryland. The two male teenagers were discovered on the night of June 5, 2017, inside a blue Honda Civic in a residential neighborhood. Both had sustained multiple gunshot wounds and were pronounced dead at the scene.
Najjar and Ziberov were honor roll students at Northwest High School and were looking forward to their graduation ceremony the following day.
The investigation into the double homicide revealed a complex story of revenge. Detectives learned that Najjar had allegedly been involved in a drug-related robbery months earlier, in late 2016 or early 2017. It was rumored that he had stolen drugs from a woman, later identified as Kara Yanez. This act of robbery is believed to be the primary motive for the killings. On the night of their deaths, Najjar had told a friend he was planning to sell a graduation ticket to an individual named Roger Garcia. This meeting, however, was a setup. Instead of a simple transaction, Najjar and Ziberov were met with a hail of bullets, with at least 30 rounds being fired into their vehicle. Najjar was struck four times, while Ziberov was hit ten times. Police believe Ziberov may have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Within weeks of the murders, authorities made several arrests. Three men were initially taken into custody on June 17, 2017: Edgar Garcia-Gaona, 24, his brother Roger Garcia, 19, and Jose Ovilson Canales-Yanez, 25. Canales-Yanez was identified as the boyfriend or husband of Kara Yanez, the woman Najjar had allegedly robbed. All three were charged with two counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. Later, in December 2017, a fourth suspect, 25-year-old Rony Alexander Galicia, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy after his DNA was found at the crime scene.
The legal proceedings that followed resulted in convictions for all four men. Jose Ovilson Canales-Yanez was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Rony Galicia was also convicted on multiple charges including first-degree murder, for which he received a life sentence without the possibility of parole. The trials of Edgar Garcia-Gaona and Roger Garcia also resulted in convictions for their roles in the premeditated ambush that cut short the lives of the two teenagers on the cusp of their futures.
