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A 34-year-old man chased a teenage girl into the street and shot her in the top of the head, leaving her to die outside her Long Beach home, a prosecutor told a jury during closing arguments of the man’s trial Wednesday, March 26.
Delivering his closing argument in Long Beach Superior Court a year to the date after the shooting that killed Briana Soto, Los Angeles County prosecutor Robert Song argued there was overwhelming evidence tying Troy Lamar Fox to her killing and a separate shooting in which four teenagers in a car escaped injury less than a month later.
A man the prosecutor identified as Fox was seen walking in the neighborhood on surveillance video shortly before the 8:20 p.m. shooting, then briefly running after the time of the shooting.
But Fox’s attorney, Joe Gibbons, said prosecutors had not done enough to prove the person in the video was Fox.
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Troy Lamar Fox, 34, of Long Beach. (Courtesy of Long Beach Police Department)
“This case turns on one simple issue and that’s the identity of the killer,” Gibbons told the jury. “The people have not shown any evidence whatsoever that Troy Fox is the man depicted in any of these videos.”
Jurors were handed the case about 3 p.m. Wednesday and are tasked with deciding whether Fox is guilty of murder and four counts of attempted murder along with special circumstance allegations for all charges.
Soto had finished a shift at McDonald’s about 8 p.m. on March 26, 2024, and was walking home in the area of 11th Street and Lewis Avenue when Fox, for unknown reasons, fired four shots at her, Song told the jury.
The two had crossed paths minutes earlier at 10th Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, but did not interact as they were walking in different directions, Song said. But they crossed a second time as Soto neared her home. She was on the phone with her boyfriend when Fox emerged.
The shooting was not captured on surveillance video, but one video captured the sound of four gunshots and two screams, the second of which occurred right as the fourth and final gunshot was fired.
The video was played in court Wednesday during Song’s initial closing argument.
