Cellphone shorthand turns into evidence

Prosecutors compare how suspects spell to prove role of Garcia in double murder

Roger Garcia, like so many 19-year-olds, made constant use of cellphone shorthand. Typing “idk” meant “I don’t know.”

“Wya” was “where you at?”

And “bet” was short for “you bet” or “I agree.”

But it was a uniquely shortened phrase — Garcia’s “all right” — that became central evidence in his double-murder trial in suburban Maryland. Prosecutors said the term showed Garcia wrote the social media messages that lured two teens into a Montgomery County neighborhood for a deadly ambush.

“‘Ight,’” they told jurors, “says so much.” Garcia was convicted of murder and handgun counts in a case Circuit Judge David Boynton labeled the “massacre” of two teenagers on the eve of their high school graduation in 2017. Garcia, now22, is set to be sentenced on Friday.

The victims, Shadi Najjar, 17, and Artem Ziberov, 18, were enticed to a cul-de-sac in Montgomery Village to meet Garcia to sell him an extra ticket to their graduation ceremony, according to trial testimony. Instead, as the boys sat in a Honda Civic, several gunmen pumped at least 30 rounds at them. Najjar and Ziberov were killed in the front seat, still in their seat belts.

Prosecutors argued there were four shooters, including Garcia. The defense said there were only three shooters and Garcia was not one of them.

In earlier trials, shooters Jose CanalesYanez, Rony Galicia, and Edgar GarciaGaona were convicted on all charges, including two counts each of first-degree murder. Each of the three — now 28, 27 and 26, respectively — was sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison.

Garcia was convicted of two counts of a lesser, non-premeditated form of homicide — second-degree murder — as well as two gun counts. He was acquitted of conspiracyand robbery-related charges.

According to evidence, a critical event occurred six months earlier that motivated the shooting. Najjar had arranged to purchase marijuana from Canales-Yanez’s wife, according to prosecutors. When he arrived, prosecutors said, he snatched the marijuana without paying and drove over the woman’s foot. The incident enraged Canales-Yanez.

Canales-Yanez decided to have Garcia make contact with Najjar over Snapchat, according to John Sharifi, Garcia’s attorney.

Garcia connected with Najjar over Snapchat on May 31, 2017. The two didn’t know each other but had gone to the same high school.

The night of June 5, Garcia, Garcia-Gaona and Galicia were hanging out in a trailer where Garcia lived. Garcia saw Najjar was on Snapchat, looking to sell an extra graduation ticket.

According to Sharifi, it was the others who seized the moment to exact revenge.

One of them, Galicia, grabbed Garcia’s phone, pretended to be him, and began communicating with Najjar, according to Sharifi.

“Still got it?” came the first message to Najjar that night from Garcia’s Snapchat. “Yeah,” Najjar wrote.

Canales-Yanez was summoned to the trailer.

Prosecutors presented evidence they said shows it was Garcia who contacted CanalesYanez. And it was his style of shorthand, prosecutors said, that proved he was the person who communicated with Najjar on Snapchat to set the trap.

Prosecutors showed jurors printouts comparing Garcia’s shorthand for “got you” with Galicia’s shorthand. Garcia wrote “gotcha,” while Galicia wrote “gotchu.” Prosecutors then highlighted one of the Snapchat messages sent to Najjar.

“I gotcha with gas money,” it read. Another Snapchat message sent to Najjar, at 10:02 p.m., made it seem that the purported ticket buyer was at a cash machine: “Ight bet im at atm by the way.”

“Roger authored those Snapchats,” Assistant State’s Attorney Marybeth Ayres argued, “because of all the different ways you spell ‘ite’ and all the phones that we have that show how all four of these guys spell ‘ite.’ ”

Najjar was with his friend, Ziberov, who also had at least one extra ticket to sell. There was no evidence linking Ziberov to the earlier botched marijuana sale. The teen, prosecutors said, was killed by the gunmen who decided they had to get rid of any witnesses.

Garcia’s attorney stresses that he didn’t orchestrate the attack and stayed at the trailer.

“The verdict is consistent,” he added in a recent interview, “with a finding that Roger was not in on any plan to murder, that he never left the trailer and that he was not a shooter.”

Prosecutors stressed that even if Garcia never left the trailer, he wrote enough luring social media exchanges to be guilty of the murders.