A woman convicted of first-degree murder in the killing of her 74-year-old great-aunt has been sentenced to 50 years in prison.
Tiffany Burney, 23 at the time of the killing, was convicted in the shooting death of her great-aunt Daisy Mae Hayes, a Tierrasanta resident.
After 50 years, Burney will be eligable for parole.
Hayes was found with a single gunshot wound to the head at her home on Gabacho Drive in 2011, according to San Diego police.
Court records reveal Burney has had a troubling mental health history in the two years before the shooting.
She filed a civil lawsuit against the county mental health agency years ago, according to the documents. In her complaint, she claimed she was mistreated in the San Diego County Mental Hospital while being cared for between April and May of 2010.
She states that she has a great paranoia of people, and that "nothing can help."
In April and December of 2010, court investigators petitioned for temporary conservators, or caretakers, for Burney. The investigators claimed she was continuously "paranoid, internally preoccupied and did not believe she had a mental illness," the court record dated April 30, 2010 read. Without a conservator, the investigator said, Burney would not be able to take care of herself.
In the August 16, 2010 complaint she claimed she was placed on temporary conservatorship for crying.
In September of 2011, a county judge terminated Burney's temporary conservatorship, saying that Burney was no longer considered gravely disabled.
