A 10-year-old Native American girl, Sienna Buster, lay in a bed in her Palmer, Alaska home on November 30 2020, gravely wounded, her life slipping away in the quiet darkness. The small room bore witness to unspeakable violence. Sienna, a female child of only ten years, was found critically injured, later succumbing to her wounds in a hospital, the light of her young life extinguished. In the same house lay two other victims: her 7-year-old brother, Ellison Buster, already dead, and their 43-year-old aunt, Kimora Buster, also fatally shot. Neither would survive that harrowing morning.
Earlier that fateful dawn, an 18-year-old man had killed another relative—his cousin, 18-year-old Cody Roehl—in a separate residence near Wasilla. The assailant—Malachi Maxon, himself 18—had recently been released from custody just a week earlier after an assault arrest. He allegedly shot Cody, stole a vehicle and a Glock semiautomatic pistol, and fled toward Palmer, where he broke in through a basement window at the Buster family home.
Authorities pieced together a chilling narrative: Maxon broke into the Palmer home in the early morning, gunshots echoing in fractured glass and splintered wood. Kimora, Ellison, and Sienna were found dead or mortally wounded. A 6-year-old child sleeping alongside Ellison was miraculously unharmed—reportedly spared by defective bullets that misfired as the assailant targeted children.
Soon enough, during his escape along Glenn Highway, law enforcement stopped Maxon. He was taken into custody. During transport between facilities, he attempted a desperate struggle—trying to seize a trooper's holstered weapon—but was subdued. Charging documents filed by Alaska State Troopers leveled four counts of first-degree murder against him, covering his cousin, aunt, and the two young cousins. No motive was publicly identified in the charging documents.
Thus ended the life of a young female child of ten—Sienna Buster—caught in a dawn of family bloodshed and sorrow, a violent rupture in Palmer that stunned the community and weighed heavily on Indigenous voices across the region.
