Woman pleads guilty to killing Fort Worth police sergeant in drunk-driving crash
An interior video camera covering the backseat of the police vehicle recorded the despair.
Fort Worth Police Department Officer Taylor Massey was in the rear of the vehicle, his cowboy hat at times filling the camera’s lens as he thrust his hands into Sgt. Billy Randolph’s chest, using compressions to try to revive his commander on their South Division patrol midnight shift.
After Randolph was struck by a car on an interstate ramp early on Aug. 12, 2024, his colleagues did not wait for an ambulance. They put the sergeant in the back of a police vehicle. Officer Christopher Cherry took off for the hospital.
Massey performed CPR for the duration of the ride.
“Sarge, I’m right here,” Massey told his unresponsive supervisor.
Prosecutors on Thursday began to present evidence to a jury in the case of a woman who authorities accused of being drunk when she drove a sedan the wrong way on an Interstate 35W ramp and struck and killed Randolph, who was standing outside his vehicle at the scene of an 18-wheeler crash and fire.
In Criminal District Court No. 2 in Tarrant County, De Aujalae Evans pleaded guilty Thursday to intoxication manslaughter of a peace officer in Randolph’s death. The trial’s purpose is to determine her punishment.
At the end of evidence presentation, prosecutors will ask the jury to render a punishment verdict that delivers justice “so that she cannot outrun accountability,” Assistant Criminal District Attorney Brittane Hamilton said in the state’s opening statement.
Evans feels deep remorse, defense attorney Cami Gildner told the jury in her opening statement. The defense will not offer excuses at trial, she said. It intends to provide “an explanation of how we got here,” Gildner said.
“This was an accident,” Gildner said. “She did not mean to do this.”
An attempt in December to seat a jury in the case was unsuccessful. The second attempt to select a jury began on Monday.
Randolph, who was 56 and a 29-year veteran of the Fort Worth department, was standing on the ramp from Interstate 35W near Sycamore School Road when the 2020 Nissan Versa that Evans was driving struck him, police said.
Evans told detectives that she drank 10 shots at a party in the hours before the 5:30 a.m. crash, according to a video recording of the detectives’ interview that prosecutors played for the jury.
Evans had a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.12 at the time of a test after the crash. Police obtained a warrant to test a sample of her blood.
After the car she was driving hit Randolph, 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, who is 26, shot her girlfriend in 2023 and was on probation at the time of the crash. In that case, she pleaded guilty to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
Judge William Knight is presiding at the trial.
This story was originally published March 25, 2026 at 5:19 PM.
