Driver gets life in prison in drunk-driving crash killing of Fort Worth police sergeant
A jury in Tarrant County on Monday showed no leniency to a woman who, after drinking shots of tequila, recklessly drove a car into a Fort Worth police sergeant as he stood on an interstate ramp, killing the department mentor and husband of 35 years.
In assessing a life prison term for De Aujalae Evans, the jury selected the most severe penalty for intoxication manslaughter causing the death of a peace officer. Evans pleaded guilty to that offense last week as the jury began to hear the evidence upon which it would decide her punishment in the case in which Evans was indicted in the August 2024 death of Sgt. Billy Randolph.
When it began to deliberate, the jury was directed to arrive at a sentence of five to 99 years, or life. Evans, 26, will become eligible for parole after she has served 30 years, although a pending probation revocation motion in connection with a case in which she shot her girlfriend 17 months before the crash could extend her time in prison.
“I want you to know Ms. Evans, you just heard my husband’s voice,” Randolph’s wife, Lisa, told the defendant after the verdict, noting that it had been 569 days since she had heard it. Lisa Randolph’s statement was made during an allocution, a one-way, off-the-court-record opportunity for victims, or in the case of criminal deaths, their relatives, to address defendants.
Randolph’s death occurred during a tragic accident for which his client had taken responsibility, defense attorney Steve Gordon said in his closing argument.
“She knows she needs to go to prison,” Gordon told the jury.
He urged the jury to avoid assessing a life term, the punishment possible for an act such as murder or child molestation, in a case in which the defendant did not intend to cause a death.
“Let’s reserve the maximum for those,” Gordon said.
A 35-year prison term was appropriate, the defense attorney suggested.
Gordon, who represented Evans with defense attorney Cami Gildner, called to the witness stand Evans’ brother, Edward Shirley, and Jayontae Allen, who had two children with another of Evans’ brothers.
That brother died in a vehicle wreck, and Evans’ role as an aunt became more important after his death. Evans played a major role in the lives of her nephews, Allen said.
Gordon asked Allen what she thought of the way in which Randolph’s death occurred.
“I think it’s sad,” she testified. “Like it sucks, for sure. We understand grief. We’ve had a lot of it.”
Evans elected not to testify.
Tarrant County Assistant District Attorneys Lloyd Whelchel and Brittane Hamilton argued that Evans deserved a life prison term.
“It was a terrible choice, and there’s no mercy to be given,” Hamilton said in the state’s closing argument in Criminal District Court No. 2.
Randolph was standing outside his vehicle at the scene of an 18-wheeler crash and fire when he was struck by the car Evans was driving.
Evans was traveling at 17 miles per hour and had a blood-alcohol content between 0.17 and 0.24 at the time Randolph was struck, experts testified at the trial that was underway over parts of six days and at which Judge William Knight presided.
The voices of each of the first three police officers who testified were clogged with emotion.
At the beginning of their time on the stand, the witnesses answered prosecutors’ introductory questions with flat speech.
When the topic turned to the ways in which Randolph had shaped them and how his death had altered their lives, responses came after long pauses and were choked with grief.
The officers described a strong mentor who became close to the people he supervised on a team working patrol on midnights. Randolph had been on the job for 29 years. He had been eligible to retire for nearly five years.
Jonathan Kennedy, a tow truck operator, also cried on the stand.
Kennedy testified that he was on one knee, hooking up equipment on the wrecked trailer when he saw headlights. A car was driving the wrong way up a ramp.
It was 5:38 a.m.
The tow truck operator screamed at the sedan’s driver. When that failed to stop her, Kennedy screamed at the sergeant standing in the car’s path.
His screams were not heard.
Randolph’s body vaulted off the car, creating a web of cracks in the driver’s side windshield.
“I witnessed Sergeant Randolph get hit and get thrown into the air,” Kennedy told the jury.
The sergeant landed on his head.
“His eyes were open, but there was nothing there,” Kennedy said.
Randolph was pulled into the back seat of a police vehicle. One officer performed CPR as another drove to a hospital.
Officer Taylor Massey was in the rear of the vehicle, his cowboy hat at times filling the lens of a camera there as he thrust his hands into Sgt. Randolph’s chest, using compressions to try to revive his commander on their South Division patrol midnight shift.
Massey performed CPR for the duration of the ride.
“Sarge, I’m right here,” Massey told his unresponsive supervisor.
Randolph died of what a pathologist concluded was blunt force head trauma that caused skull fractures and bleeding on and in his brain.
Randolph’s wife, daughter and other relatives filled courtroom gallery benches during the trial, including when prosecutors displayed five autopsy photos to the jury.
Kennedy told officers just after the crash that he did not see Randolph get hit, defense attorney Gordon noted in a question as he cross-examined the tow truck operator.
“I believed I had turned away, but I had not,” Kennedy testified.
In therapy he came to understand that his brain had played a trick on him, Kennedy said.
With Major Case Unit detectives working other elements of the investigation, Homicide Unit Detective Kyle Sullivan wanted to interview the suspect. Randolph and Sullivan had worked together in earlier assignments.
After indicating she remembered little of the night’s events, Evans eventually told Sullivan that she drank at a party in Grand Prairie.
She took shots of Don Julio.
“Probably more than 10,” Evans, in a hoarse voice, said of the tequila.
The suspect said that she left the party and intended to drive to an apartment in Fort Worth. She was on the way when she became lost.
“Are you sorry for what happened or are you sorry for getting caught?” Sullivan asked.
“Everything,” she said.
After the crash, Evans continued to drive, got out of the sedan and ran toward a Motel 6, according to an arrest warrant affidavit. Officers arrested her in the motel parking lot.
Evans drove her car 100 yards past where Randolph lay bleeding out, prosecutor Hamilton told the jurors.
Prosecutors played a video recording of the detective’s interview for the jury.
The detective and suspect went several rounds on the matter of whether Evans knew she hit a person with the car. She indicated that she did not.
“I don’t believe that at all,” Sullivan said in response to a question from prosecutor Whelchel.
Sullivan and another detective left the interview room, leaving Evans and food on a table. She sobbed in her chair.
Prosecutors called to the stand former Police Chief Neil Noakes, who recalled getting to catch up with Randolph when both worked off-duty security jobs at TCU football games.
“Billy was one of a kind,” Noakes testified. “It was like winning the supervisor lottery.”
Current Police Chief Eddie Garcia was in the courtroom gallery on Monday and sat beside Lisa Randolph.
In a statement after the verdict, the Fort Worth Police Department wrote, “As this chapter comes to a close, we continue to stand with Sergeant Randolph’s family, his loved ones, and the officers who served alongside him. Billy dedicated nearly 30 years to the residents of Fort Worth. Billy was a leader in this department and someone people counted on. His loss is still felt across our department and throughout this community.”
This story was originally published March 30, 2026 at 4:13 PM.
