A Long Beach man convicted of killing a 17-year-old girl as she walked home from work and attempting to kill four others in a separate shooting was sentenced to 358 years to life in state prison on Thursday, July 31 — with the judge saying it was frustrating he never said why he shot her.
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Troy Lamar Fox, 34, during his sentencing in Long Beach Superior Court, looked at each of six speakers as they addressed the court about the loss of Briana Soto, who was gunned down by Fox steps from her home near 11th Street and Lewis Avenue on March 26, 2024.
While the Soto shooting itself wasn’t captured on video, surveillance video from a nearby home did capture the sound of four gunshots and her two screams — the second stopping at the final gunshot.
Soto, on the phone with her boyfriend when Fox ambushed her, was hospitalized with a gunshot wound to the head but the high school senior died three days later.
She had just gotten off work at McDonald’s, prosecutor Robert Song said. Soto’s mother, Ana Morales, heard the gunshots.
Fox would be identified in surveillance videos walking around the neighborhood before the shooting, then running not long after the shots. Police believe he then slowed down to a walk, going to his then-girlfriend’s apartment, eight blocks away.
Authorities never determined a motive.
“That’s what I want him to answer,” said Maria Estrada Morales, the girl’s grandmother. “Why did he kill her? She was just a little rosebud that was going to open.”
Fox was convicted in March of Soto’s murder, four counts of attempted murder for an April 9, 2024, shooting in which the victims escaped injury, and two counts of felon in possession of a firearm.
In that second shooting, Fox was near his then-girlfriend’s car in a parking lot by 14th Street and Pine Avenue when another car pulled up containing four teenagers. The driver of that car fled after Fox grabbed a rifle and fired 13 rounds, hitting the car, Song said. The driver crashed about a block away.
Soto’s younger sister Camila Soto Morales told the court she was nurturing, kind and beautiful and always made her feel seen and heard. The two shared a bedroom, which now feels “too empty without her warmth,” she said.
“I felt I was losing a part of myself, it’s a hole I don’t know how to fill,” Camila Soto Morales said. “Life without Briana is like living in a shattered world with no one to talk to.”
Since Soto’s death, the sister said she’s overly cautious, “always on edge, like something is around the corner. The safety I once felt is gone, and it hasn’t come back.”
To Fox, she said “You snatched away her dreams before they had a chance to grow. I’m forced to grow up without the person who made me feel safe and understood.”
Soto’s mother said in Spanish that her daughter loved shopping and dancing, wanted to work, and “always wanted the best for us. She wanted to keep her family together.”
Soto’s younger brother, an aunt and a cousin also spoke.
Fox’s attorney, Joe Gibbons, declined to comment after the hearing.
Judge Judith L. Meyer encouraged family members to find ways to honor Soto’s life, and to try to turn around their sorrow “and find happiness in all she brought you. …
“There’s no justice in this case,” the judge said. “One of the most frustrating aspects of this case is the why. It never came out in court, and the court can only surmise that this person is evil.”