A man incarcerated in a state correctional facility was indicted on murder today in the 2018 homicide of a 16-year-old girl in Fairfield Township, according to the Journal-News.
Markeylnd Townsend, 22, is accused of killing Sydney Garcia-Tovar in July 2018. He was arrested two weeks later on an unrelated aggravated robbery charge in Hamilton and sentenced in April 2019 to three years in prison on the second-degree felony.
Townsend’s expected prison release date is March 7, 2022. At a March 2021 parole hearing, it was recommended he be paroled prior to his prison term ending, which could have been up to six months before his expected release date.
Townsend petitioned in April 2020 Butler County Common Pleas Judge Michael Oster, who presided over his robbery case, for an early release. It was denied.
Garcia-Tovar, of Hamilton, was fatally shot at 10:27 p.m. July 23 inside a car outside the Tyler’s Creek Apartments on Wildbranch Road in Fairfield Twp. She was transported to U.C. Medical Center in Cincinnati by medical helicopter and was pronounced dead the next day.
A second gunshot victim, 21-year-old Joseph Goolsby, of Hamilton, was found with non-life-threatening injuries. McCroskey said Goalsby has recovered from his injuries.
Several 911 calls were made at the time of the shooting, with one caller saying, “It was over in five (shots). It was like pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop.”
Garcia-Tovar had just graduated in May 2018 from Hamilton City Schools’ Miami School as part of that school’s independent learning program.
