Juan Pedro Garcia was 23 when he was shot to death on October 4, 2014, in Memphis after a homecoming visit. He and another young man had arrived from Texas and were dropped at a house on Gherald Street in the Nutbush neighborhood where friends from their hometown in Mexico were gathered. An evening yard gathering turned violent near 10:00 p.m. when two men approached and fired into the air, then ordered people down and demanded wallets.

Garcia suffered a catastrophic abdominal wound; the medical examiner described a bullet track through the small intestine and major pelvic blood vessels, coming to rest in the buttock, and the bleeding proved fatal. Another man was killed in the same attack and several others were wounded but survived. Investigators treated the incident as an attempted armed robbery that escalated into murder. Prosecutors later indicted Marterius O’Neal and Antwon Young on first-degree felony murder and related robbery counts, and a third person, Austin Yewell, was charged on related counts; testimony described a plan to “hit a lick” and linked a 38-caliber revolver to the plot. Juries returned guilty verdicts and both O’Neal and Young received effective life sentences that were upheld on appeal.