Maria Catalina Garcia was just twenty years old when her life ended on a Tuesday afternoon. She was in Raleigh, North Carolina, dealing with the messy reality of a young relationship. The police say she was shot and killed by the person she was supposed to be closest to. It is a sudden end for a woman who still had her whole life ahead of her.
The shooting went down around 3:10 p.m. in the 1100 block of Garner Road. This is a busy stretch in Wake County, right in the middle of the Raleigh metro area. Officers rushed to the scene after getting a call about a gunshot victim. They found Maria bleeding badly on the ground.
Paramedics loaded her into an ambulance and sped her to a local hospital. The medical team fought to save her, but her injuries were just too severe. She had suffered life-threatening gunshot wounds. The doctors could not pull her through, and police confirmed she died shortly after arriving at the emergency room.
Detectives quickly figured out that the shooter was not a random stranger. Maria and the suspect were actually dating. The 18-year-old girlfriend, Shaliah Nikole Battista, was the one who pulled the trigger. The fact that they were in a relationship when the bullets started flying adds a dark layer to an already tragic story.
Shaliah did not try to run away after the shooting. She just stayed right there at the scene on Garner Road. When the cops arrived, they took her into custody without any fuss. They slapped her with a murder charge on the spot. She is now sitting in a jail cell, facing the rest of her life behind bars for what she did to Maria.
It turns out there was some prior trouble involving Maria in the domestic violence arena. Court records show she got arrested back on August 21, 2026. She was hit with simple assault and a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence charges. The police reports do not spell out the exact details of that old case or how it ended, but it shows a history of rough times.
Now, Shaliah is locked up tight. The judge denied her bond, meaning she gets no chance to walk free while the case moves forward. She is scheduled to stand in front of a Wake County judge on Wednesday afternoon, October 28, for her first court date. Meanwhile, the Raleigh Police Department is still digging into the exact events that led to Maria taking a bullet.
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