Police say teenager saw father shoot and kill mother in Fontana

The Southern California teenager killed this week alongside her father in a shootout with law enforcement was with him a day earlier when he fatally shot her mother, police said Thursday .

Savannah Graziano, 15, was in the back of her father’s van when he fatally shot her mother, Tracy Martinez, on Monday, Fontana police say. Witnesses and two videos – one of a passerby and the other of a doorbell – show that she stood still as her mother screamed.

“She’s just sitting in the back seat,” Sgt. said Christian Surgent in a telephone interview on Thursday.

Authorities previously said the teenager was elsewhere when her mother was murdered and was later abducted by her father, Anthony Graziano. But the two videos obtained Wednesday showed her inside the truck between 30 and 60 seconds before the gunfire started, police said.

Witnesses did not report seeing Savannah get out of the vehicle, Surgent said, as Martinez tried to escape and Graziano – her ex-husband – jumped out brandishing a handgun.

Graziano, 45, shot Martinez several times and also turned around and shot a nearby car. No one else was hurt.

Martinez was able to identify his killer as Graziano before his death, Surgent said, but never mentioned his daughter’s presence. No video showed the shooting.

Savannah and her father were both killed a day later after a long chase along a deserted freeway east of Los Angeles in Hesperia – about 56.33 kilometers north of the homicide scene. Gunshots were fired at the pursuing officers from Graziano’s van, which became inoperative after leaving the freeway. The shooter fired multiple rounds through the windshield of a patrol car and then disabled a second pursuing vehicle, authorities said.

Graziano died in the truck while Savannah, wearing tactical gear and a helmet, was shot and killed as she ran towards deputies amid a hail of gunfire. Authorities are investigating whether she was shot by deputies, her father or both.

A preliminary investigation indicates that Savannah was likely unarmed when she was shot, reports the Los Angeles Times.

The state attorney general’s office is investigating the shooting because it involved the death of a minor. Meanwhile, detectives in Fontana still haven’t determined the motive for the murder.

Investigators then searched Fontana’s family home – which Graziano and her daughter left just weeks before – and Graziano’s storage unit. Inside the storage pod they found numerous AR-15 style rifles, handguns, thousands of rounds, smoke grenades and other tactical gear, Surgent said.

The guns legally belonged to Graziano, who was neither on probation nor on parole. Savannah’s younger brother told investigators the siblings grew up around guns.

Authorities said they have police video showing the freeway shooting, but have not made it public, nor have they released the two videos showing Savannah in the van just before her mother was killed. killed.