FAIRFIELD TWP., Ohio — One of two men facing murder charges for the 2018 shooting death of 16-year-old Sydney Garcia-Tovar entered a plea of not guilty on Tuesday.
Now-19-year-old Jordan Spain was arrested in September 2022 and indicted by a grand jury at the end of March 2023. He faces one charge of murder and two counts of felonious assault.
Police said Spain was 14-years-old at the time of Garcia-Tovar's murder. Spain is being held in the Butler County Correctional Center until a trial can be scheduled for him.
In April 2021, then-22-year-old Markeylnd Townsend was also charged with murder and felonious assault for his alleged involvement in Garcia-Tovar's murder. Townsend was already incarcerated on an unrelated aggravated robbery charge when charges were leveled against him for the homicide.
Townsend is still incarcerated, currently in the Mansfield Correctional Institute in Mansfield, Ohio.
Fairfield Township police said Garcia-Tovar was in the wrong place at the wrong time on July 23, 2018, when bullets began flying. Fairfield Township police sergeant Brandon McCroskey said Garcia-Tovar was with a group of people outside the Tyler's Creek apartments on Wildbranch Road that day.
As she was leaving, McCroskey said bullets hit Garcia-Tovar's car, striking her in the back of the head and hitting a man in her passenger seat; the man survived, but Garcia-Tovar died in the hospital the next day.
“Sydney did not deserve to die from being there and being involved in that situation,” McCroskey said after Garcia-Tovar's murder. “She was a victim. It is a tragedy all the way around.”
Garcia-Tovar’s family said she was an ROTC cadet at Hamilton High School who had hopes of one day becoming a Marine.
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