The Zaria Owens manslaughter sentence was delivered in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, following a week-long trial that concluded in July 2026, with a jury returning guilty verdicts on voluntary manslaughter and possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime.
Owens, 25, was found guilty in connection with the August 2023 shooting death of her boyfriend, 21-year-old Tyquirez Rashad Sims, outside an apartment complex on College Pointe Lane in Spartanburg. The killing took place in front of her three-year-old son.
The Zaria Owens Manslaughter Sentence: Conviction and Competing Figures
The sentencing figures reported across outlets differ. The Spartanburg County jury’s guilty verdict, confirmed by the Spartanburg County 7th Circuit Solicitor’s Office press release, covers the two counts. On the voluntary manslaughter charge, Owens received 21 years. A separate five-year term was imposed for the weapons charge, which the court ordered to run concurrently, producing a 21-year effective sentence on that reading.
WYFF4, citing the 7th Circuit Solicitor’s Office directly, reported a total sentence of 26 years. The discrepancy between the two figures suggests the weapons charge may have been ordered to run consecutively in the final pronouncement, rather than concurrently as earlier reported. The higher figure carries the more authoritative attribution and is carried here accordingly.
Yahoo News identified Owens as being from Moore, South Carolina, a community within Spartanburg County, and confirmed the week-long trial.
Events of August 2023
The incident occurred just before 9 p.m. outside the apartment complex. Owens and Sims had been living together, but Sims had told her to move out. A friend relayed that account to investigators.
As the argument escalated, Sims realised Owens had taken his gun and his phone. He followed her to her car. Prosecutors told the jury that Owens pointed Sims’s own firearm at him, at which point Sims went back into the apartment, retrieved the three-year-old boy, and brought the child to the mother’s car in an effort to get her to leave.
A witness told investigators that Owens then raised her arm toward Sims. The gun discharged once. Sims was struck in the head. First responders found him dead at the scene, with prosecutors stating he was standing on the curb, several feet from Owens, when the shot was fired. Owens took the child and drove away. Police located the vehicle at another apartment complex. She turned herself in the following morning.
During a custodial interview, Owens initially advanced a self-defence account. She subsequently described reaching for her son when she saw Sims push the child toward her, causing the toddler to stumble, at which point she picked up the gun and fired. Authorities confirmed the child sustained no physical injury.
The Victim and His Family
Tyquirez Rashad Sims was born on 28 June 2002 at Spartanburg Regional Hospital, according to his obituary published by J.M. Dunbar funeral services. At the time of his death he was 21 years old and had recently become a father: his own child was six months old when he was killed.
Deputy Solicitor Spenser Smith, prosecuting for the 7th Circuit Solicitor’s Office, described the human cost. ‘Tyquirez had a loving family and had become a father several months before his death,’ Smith said. ‘This is a tragic case of domestic violence that has impacted two families and two young children. Ms. Owens killed Tyquirez Sims in front of her son and now that child will grow up without his mother.’
Fox Carolina confirmed the prosecution was brought by the Seventh Circuit Solicitor’s Office and that the guilty verdicts were returned during proceedings in July 2026, nearly three years after the shooting.
Owens will serve her sentence with two young children, neither of whom will have their parent present: Sims’s infant, who will grow up without a father, and the three-year-old witness to the shooting, who will grow up without his mother. Any challenge to the sentence or conviction, subject to any onward appeal Owens may pursue, will be the next procedural question before the South Carolina courts.
