New lead emerges in nine-year-old Selma murder case of Desiree Austin

A blue 2002 Buick Rendezvous and two possible witnesses have pushed new life into the nine-year search for answers in the killing of Desiree Austin, the Selma teenager shot in front of a friend’s home near Mill Street and Olive Street.

The Fresno County Sheriff's Office asked the public on April 16, 2026, to help identify two people and a vehicle believed to be tied to the homicide. Investigators said the suspect vehicle was a blue 2002 Buick Rendezvous with California license plate 7EDR747, and witnesses described a female driver with a messy bun and a male passenger.

Desiree was 15 years old and a sophomore at Selma High School when she was fatally shot on August 31, 2017, during a drive-by in Selma. Officers from the Selma Police Department responded to reports of gunfire at Mill Street and Olive Street and found Desiree with gunshot wounds at the scene.

Investigators also said the firearm used in Desiree’s killing may be linked to a separate shooting elsewhere in Fresno County, raising the possibility that one piece of evidence could connect multiple cases. For a county that has spent years trying to solve old homicides, that detail matters: it gives detectives another path beyond the original crime scene and witness accounts from 2017.

For Lydia Magaña, the new lead has reopened a wound that never closed. She said Desiree left to celebrate a friend’s birthday, and the last words they exchanged were, “I love you.” Magaña said she had not spoken publicly in detail about the case for years, and she described living with the loss of her only daughter every day since the killing.

“I miss her everyday and she was a part of my world and I feel I don't have anything because she's gone,” Magaña said.

Magaña said the new information cannot bring Desiree back, but it could bring some peace. Nine years after the shooting, the case now rests on whether a witness, a vehicle, or the possible link to another Fresno County shooting will finally give detectives the break that eluded them for nearly a decade.