The voices of each of the first three police officers who testified at De Aujalae Evans’ trial were clogged with emotion.
At the beginning of their time on the stand at the trial in which Evans pleaded guilty to intoxication manslaughter of a peace officer and elected to have a jury assess her punishment, the witnesses answered prosecutors’ introductory questions with flat speech.
When the topic turned to the ways in which Fort Worth Police Department Sgt. Billy 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, a 29-year veteran of the department, had been eligible to retire for nearly five years.
A portrait of Sgt. Billy Randolph was unveiled at Fort Worth Police Department headquarters on Nov. 4, 2024. Shambhavi Rimal srimal@star-telegram.com
Jonathan Kennedy, a tow truck operator, cried too.
Randolph and his officers were at the scene of an 18-wheeler crash and fire on Interstate 35W in the dark of early morning in August 2024.
Kennedy testified that he was 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 in Criminal District Court No. 2 in Tarrant County.
The sergeant landed on his head.
“His eyes were open, but there was nothing there,” Kennedy said.
Randolph was loaded into the back seat of a police vehicle. One officer performed CPR as another drove to a hospital. Randolph died of what a pathologist concluded was blunt force head trauma that caused skull fractures and bleeding on and in his brain.
About 20 relatives and friends of the sergeant have filled three center courtroom gallery benches during the trial, including when prosecutors displayed five autopsy photos to the jury.
Lisa Randolph, the wife of the late Fort Worth Police Department Sgt. Billy Randolph, becomes emotional during speeches about her husband during his honorary candlelit vigil at the Fort Worth PD South Division headquarters in Fort Worth on Aug. 14, 2024. Sgt. Randolph was struck by a car while working at a crash scene on the exit ramp of I-35W near Sycamore School Road. Chris Torres ctorres@star-telegram.com
Kennedy told officers just after the crash that he did not see Randolph get hit, defense attorney Steve 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.
Defense attorney Cami Gildner also represents Evans. Tarrant County Assistant District Attorneys Lloyd Whelchel and Brittane Hamilton represent the state in the case.
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.
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 uneaten food on a table. She sobbed in her chair.
The trial is to continue with additional witnesses in the state’s case on Monday.
This story was originally published March 27, 2026 at 7:31 PM.
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Emerson Clarridge covers crime and other breaking news for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He works days and reports on law enforcement affairs in Tarrant County. He previously was a reporter at the Omaha World-Herald and the Observer-Dispatch in Utica, New York.