Police Make Fourth Arrest in June Killings of Students

Rony Alexander Galicia | MCPD

Montgomery County police announced Friday evening that a fourth person had been arrested in the June 5 killing of two Northwest High School students, slaying that occurred the day before the two victims were to graduate.

Rony Alexander Galicia, 25, of the 19500 block of Frederick Road in Germantown was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit the murders of the victims, a police statement said.

He was charged in the homicides of Shadi Adi Najjar, 17, and Artem S. Ziberov, 18, who were killed inside a blue Honda Civic parked in the 8200 block of Gallery Court in Montgomery Village.

Police collected DNA evidence at the scene, and after collecting a sample of Galicia’s DNA, the Montgomery County Police Crime Lab determined the DNA at the crime scene belonged to Galicia, police said.

The killings occurred about 10:46 p.m., Monday, June 5. That’s when dispatchers received a call from a resident reporting the sounds of shots fired in the 8200 block of Gallery Court, police said. Montgomery Village District officers responded to the area and found Najjar and Ziberov inside of a car parked on the street, suffering from a number of gunshot wounds. They died at the scene.

The first arrests in the case were June 17. Police arrested Edgar Garcia-Gaona, 24, of the 100 block of Lamont Lane in Gaithersburg, Roger Garcia, 19, of the 19500 block of Frederick Road in Germantown, and Jose Ovilson Canales-Yanez, 25, of the 18400 block of Cape Jasmine Way in Gaithersburg. Each was charged with the first-degree murders of the victims, police said.

On Friday, investigators obtained an arrest warrant for Galicia charging him two counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Galicia was arrested at approximately 11:30 a.m. this morning, after he was stopped while traveling in a vehicle on Hungerford Drive (Md. 355) near Mannakee Street in Rockville. Bail information for Galicia is not yet available, police said.

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