A Pittsburgh man is headed to prison for up to 60 years for killing an ex-girlfriend with her own gun.
DeAngelo Zieglar, 29, pleaded guilty Tuesday to murdering Rachel Dowden four years ago after the 28-year-old woman walked from her job at a Cricket cellphone store to a Bellevue bus stop.
In addition to third-degree murder, Zieglar pleaded guilty this week to burglary, robbery, simple assault and making terroristic threats.
In a victim-impact statement to Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Edward J. Borkowski, DeShawna Lewis said her sister’s tragic death ended a life “lived in constant fear.”
“Knowing that she was suffering silently, trying to survive in fear, is heartbreaking beyond words,” according to Lewis’ statement. “No one should live like that — and no one should die because of it.”
Police said Dowden had legally purchased a Smith & Wesson handgun to protect herself from her abusive ex-boyfriend. She also received a restraining order against Zieglar two months before the Jan. 19, 2022, shooting.
Less than two weeks before their fatal encounter, Zieglar snatched Dowden’s handgun from her during a confrontation at Dowden’s South Side home. Zieglar allegedly pistol-whipped Dowden before taking the gun.
Police said a man, who they have declined to name, met Zieglar in Downtown Pittsburgh on the night of the shooting. Zieglar had asked the man, identified in court records as Witness #1, to go to the North Side with him to smoke, according to the complaint.
The pair instead got off a bus in Bellevue, the complaint said. Zieglar ran toward a woman heading to a bus stop, stopped in front of her and fired three times, the witness told police.
Naomi Dowden, another sister, told Borkowski about the last text message from Dowden. Sent at 7:43 p.m., about a half-hour before the shooting, it detailed how Zieglar was harassing her.
“She wasn’t sick. It wasn’t some freak accident. She was intentionally murdered — and that’s a reality that is still hard to face,” Dowden said. “My sister would still be here if not for the selfishness, cowardice and entitlement that is DeAngelo Zieglar.”
Ronald Dowden added that his daughter “was more than just a name in a case file.”
“She was a bright light in this world,” he said in his victim impact statement which, like other family statements, spelled Dowden’s first name as Rach’EL. “Rach’EL had dreams that were brutally stolen from herself and from us.”
Abandoning capital punishment
Prosecutors initially sought the death penalty in the Dowden shooting.
A now-retired Common Pleas judge pushed back, penning a 10-page opinion that cited the yearslong moratorium on capital punishment in Pennsylvania — first instituted by former Gov. Tom Wolf, and then extended by current Gov. Josh Shapiro.
In 2024, an appellate court found that Judge Anthony M. Mariani had “usurped” the prosecution’s authority with his decision.
Prosecutors later agreed to drop the capital case. The two sides settled in recent weeks on a 20- to 40-year prison term for the murder charge, according to the Allegheny County Public Defenders’ Office. Borkowski tacked on a 10- to 20-year sentence for robbery.
“We are pleased that death was taken off the table, as we would be for any death-penalty case,” Sarah Linder, a spokeswoman for the office, told TribLive.
Linder called death-penalty cases “resource-intensive” and said they are “extremely stressful for all of the people involved.”
Online court dockets show a criminal record for Zieglar dating to 2016, when he was 20. Cases involving receiving stolen property, robbery, a gun charge and theft sent Zieglar to jail or led to probation.