Lourdes had just picked up her three children from her parents’ house on her way home from work at San Francisco International Airport in Millbrae. After pulling up to her home in the Bayview, she was checking her mailbox when she heard shots ring out.
“When she heard that gun, like a mom, like a lion, you protect,” Soza said. “Like eagles you just put your wings on it.
“She told her kids to go down, she pushed her partner [down],” she continued. Soza remembered Lourdes’ partner telling her” she didn’t get a chance to even squat.”
A decade-old cold case
Anthony James Tyree, 34, was arrested Wednesday for allegedly firing the “barrage” of shots that hit Lourdes from a passenger seat in the Dodge pick-up truck speeding down Ingalls Street just after 4 p.m. on Jan. 27, 2015.
District Attorney Brooke Jenkins alleged in a press release that as the Dodge overtook a black Infinity, he and another person in the car opened fire, striking two people in the Infinity, including the driver, and Lourdes Soza, whose home happened to be behind the incident.
Lourdes and the Infinity’s passenger both died of their wounds. The driver was injured, according to San Francisco police.
For months following the tragedy, the San Francisco Police Department searched for the shooters, launching a double-homicide investigation that led to publicly-released surveillance footage of a suspect vehicle seven months later.
At the time, the Soza family pleaded for people to help locate the person who killed Lourdes, but no arrests were made.
Soza said after a certain period of time had passed, they felt like no one was looking anymore.
Still, she said, until her father died, he continued to believe that he would find the person who had killed his daughter.
“Because to him, the kids are supposed to bury the parents, not the parents, their child,” Soza said. “He stayed with that. [For] 10 years, my father was waiting for justice to be served. It was an obsession of my father.”
‘Her kids were her world’
Soza said the decade since her sister’s passing has been difficult for the family, but has also brought them together.
After her death, Lourdes’ kids were separated. Her oldest daughter stayed with Lourdes’ parents, while her son and younger daughter went to live with their fathers.
“We tried to be there, even though it was hard because [Lourdes’ kids] were small [when it] happened,” Soza said. “We were trying to be moms, no matter what.”
