A Fort Worth woman pleaded guilty Thursday to intoxication manslaughter — hours after her own trial began — in the drunk-driving death of a decorated police sergeant and military veteran who was simply doing his job on the side of a highway.
De’Aujalae Evans, 25, entered her plea on March 26, 2026, bringing an abrupt end to proceedings that had barely gotten started. She now faces up to 20 years in prison for the death of Sergeant Billy Randolph, a 29-year veteran of the Fort Worth Police Department who was killed while working a crash scene on Interstate 35W. The case has drawn intense public attention — not just for the tragedy of Randolph’s death, but for the troubling details surrounding Evans’s history that made the crash, in hindsight, feel almost preventable.
A Deadly Wrong-Way Drive
Evans was behind the wheel of a 2020 Nissan Versa, traveling the wrong direction on I-35 South near Sycamore School Road, when she struck Randolph. He had been on scene responding to a separate incident — a tractor-trailer fire and fuel spill — when Evans’s vehicle slammed into him. He didn’t have a chance to get out of the way. CBS News reported that Evans entered the guilty plea just hours after the trial got underway.
By her own admission, Evans had consumed 10 shots of alcohol over four hours before getting in that car. She failed a field sobriety test at the scene and, perhaps tellingly, refused a blood draw. That refusal didn’t help her case. It rarely does.
A Record That Made It Worse
Here’s where it gets harder to stomach. At the time of the crash, Evans was already serving six years of probation for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon — stemming from a 2023 incident in which she shot her romantic partner. One of the explicit conditions of that probation? No alcohol consumption. Fox4 detailed her prior criminal history and the terms of her supervision in a report that left little ambiguity about how thoroughly Evans had violated her release conditions.
That’s the catch. She wasn’t some first-time offender who made a terrible mistake in isolation. She was already under court supervision, already prohibited from drinking, and already carrying the weight of a prior violent conviction. And still, somehow, she ended up on an interstate, going the wrong way, in the middle of the night.
Who Was Billy Randolph?
Sergeant Billy Randolph was 56 years old. He had spent 29 years with Fort Worth Police South Patrol — nearly three decades of showing up, working scenes, keeping people safe. Before that, he served in the U.S. Air Force. KERANEWS noted that a vigil was held in his honor after his death, drawing colleagues, community members, and fellow veterans. He was, by every account, the kind of officer who made the job look like a calling rather than a career.
Twenty-nine years. You do the math — Randolph joined the department when Evans was still a toddler. He made it through nearly three decades of patrol work, traffic scenes, and late-night shifts, only to be killed by a wrong-way driver on a stretch of highway he’d probably worked dozens of times before.
What Comes Next
Still, the legal process isn’t over. Evans’s sentencing has yet to be determined, and the range — up to 20 years — leaves considerable room for a judge or jury to weigh the full picture of her record, her actions that night, and the life she took. Whether the outcome feels like justice to Randolph’s family and colleagues is another matter entirely.
Some cases are open-and-shut in the facts but never truly closed in the lives they touch. This one feels like that. A sergeant who served his country and his city for decades, killed on a routine call. A woman who was already on thin legal ice, who drank anyway, drove anyway, and ended up going the wrong way on every possible level.
Sergeant Billy Randolph deserved to make it home that night. He didn’t — and no guilty plea changes that.
