The California 15-year-old, who was kidnapped by her father after he killed her mother, was a witness to the murder of her mother.
Both she and her father also lost their lives the following day. Their lives ended in a shootout with police on a desert highway in Southern California.
One day before the shootout, Monday, Savannah Graziano sat in the back seat of her dad’s pickup truck while he shot her mother, Tracy Martinez. The Fontana police say that a witness, as well as two videos from doorbell apps, showed her sitting in the truck as the murder unfolded.
“She’s just sitting in the backseat,” Sgt. Christian Surgent said in a phone interview Thursday.
Deputies had initially thought Savannah did not witness her father, Anthony Graziano, shooting Martinez. The videos show that she was in the vehicle, and she did not try to escape.
The shooting was not shown on the videos, but Martinez identified her ex-husband as the killer before she died.
One day later, both Savannah and her father wrote the last chapter of their story. A chase on an interstate near Los Angeles, in Hesperia, resulted in Graziano firing at deputies from the truck. One patrol car was disabled, and the shooter’s vehicle went off the highway. Savannah, wearing tactical gear and a helmet, ran out of the vehicle toward deputies and was shot. When law enforcement officers approached Graziano’s vehicle, they found him dead.
According to officials, Savannah and Graziano had moved out of the home occupied by Martinez, several weeks before the murder. A search of a storage unit rented by Graziano revealed rifles, handguns, ammunition, smoke grenades and tactical gear.
Authorities have a video that shows the shootout on the freeway, but have not made it public. The doorbell videos have not been released either.
Questions have been raised about whether Savannah shot at police when she ran out of the vehicle. Did the deputies wear body-cameras? Why was Savannah wearing tactical gear? Was she armed?