TAUNTON, Mass. (Court TV) — A judge denied bond for a woman facing multiple charges after a deadly shooting at a backyard birthday party.
Sienna Barboza appears in court on Sept. 10, 2026. (Court TV)
Sienna Barboza, 25, is charged with one count of murder and seven counts of armed assault with intent to murder in connection with the Sept. 6 shooting that injured eight people. Barboza appeared with her attorney in court on Thursday and pleaded not guilty to each charge.
Prosecutor Jason Mohan said at the hearing that Taunton police officers were dispatched to a home on Weir Street after multiple 911 calls reporting gunfire. When officers arrived, they found multiple people injured. Six suffered non-life-threatening injuries. Zirovick DePina, 22, was flown to a hospital but died during surgery, Mohan said. Another victim was paralyzed from the waist down from a gunshot wound to the abdomen.
At the time of the shooting, about 50 to 60 people were attending a birthday party held in the backyard of the Weir Street home. The party was centered in the home’s backyard, which was separated from train tracks along the back of the property by a fence and bushes.
Investigators at the scene found 14 spent 9 mm shell casings along the train tracks. “From the position where the shots were fired,” Mohan said Thursday, “the shooter would not be able to see into the backyard, which meant that all 14 shots were fired indiscriminately into the crowd of people.”
Surveillance video showed a Mercedes SUV driving past the Weir Street address before parking about a block away, along the train tracks. The video showed two people getting out of the vehicle before the shooting and then walking back to the SUV minutes after the shooting.
Zirovick DePina (Conley, Russell & Pica Funeral Home)
Mohan said that detectives tied Barboza to the vehicle and brought her in for an interview, during which she said she was home all night on Sept. 6 — but she also confirmed she was the only driver of the Mercedes SUV. When detectives searched Barboza’s phone, they found that she had searched Waze for the Weir Street address about 30 minutes before the shooting.
Surveillance video showed Barboza’s SUV driving away from the area of the shooting without headlights and then returning to her home in New Bedford. According to prosecutors, that video showed Barboza getting out of the vehicle at her home with two unidentified people wearing clothing consistent with the two who left her car and then returned around the time of the shooting.
Barboza’s attorney, James Hanley, asked Judge Michael Brennan for a bond, citing his client’s lack of criminal history. Hanley said that Barboza is the mother of two children under 5 and has the support of her parents. “This incident is something that’s completely out of character, not something that they would know their daughter to be involved in whatsoever.”
Hanley argued that the evidence shows that Barboza’s involvement was limited to being in the vehicle, and suggested she may not have known what was happening. “There’s nothing that we’ve heard that indicates she had any knowledge as to what the shooter was going to do when he got out of the car or that there was any planning involved with regard to the incident at all,” he said. “There’s no allegation that she got out of the motor vehicle at any point in time. There’s really no evidence she knew that there was even a firearm involved here.”
DePina’s obituary described him as a graduate of Brockton High School whose hobbies included basketball and soccer, and who loved to dance “and was usually the ‘life of the party.'”
Brennan ordered Barboza to be held without bail. He scheduled her next hearing for Oct. 7.
