In the final weeks of her life, 20-year-old Sahmyra Garcia was living in fear of her ex-boyfriend, Marcus Burney. After she ended their relationship, he began stalking her, a terrifying ordeal that included him allegedly throwing a cinder block through the front door of the rowhouse she shared with a friend. Garcia had confided in a coworker that Burney had assaulted her in the past and that she had been briefly hospitalized due to his abuse just weeks before her death.
Feeling that her concerns were not being taken seriously by the police, she took the step of obtaining an emergency protection-from-abuse order against the 41-year-old Burney.
On the morning of Tuesday, November 8, 2022, Sahmyra Garcia was on her way to her job as a security specialist at a Target store in South Philadelphia. Tragically, the protection order she had sought just hours earlier had not yet been served, as police were unable to locate Burney that morning. As she walked near the corner of Broad and Ellsworth Streets, Burney spotted her. He got out of his truck and shot the young female at least 10 times with an untraceable 'ghost gun'. Nearby SEPTA police officers heard the gunshots and saw Burney attempting to flee. After crashing his car, he emerged with the gun, and the officers shot him in the leg, taking him into custody at the scene.
Marcus Burney, who had a long criminal record that included convictions for assault and a history of domestic violence with a previous partner, was charged with murder and weapons offenses. He ultimately pleaded guilty to third-degree murder, illegal gun possession, and related offenses as part of a plea agreement. In August 2023, a judge sentenced him to 35 to 70 years in prison.
The sentence brought little solace to Garcia's grieving family, who expressed their profound disappointment, believing that Burney deserved a life sentence for his calculated actions. Her father, Hector Garcia, stated, 'I don't think justice was served today.' In the wake of their devastating loss, Garcia's parents have filed a lawsuit against Polymer80, the manufacturer of the ghost gun used to kill their daughter, accusing the company of wrongful death and negligence. They remember their daughter, a cancer survivor, as a bubbly and outgoing young woman who was a fighter and made friends everywhere she went.
