HOUSTON \u2013 A Houston family waited nearly three years for justice, and on Thursday, they finally got it. A jury sentenced 51-year-old Yoland Washington to 75 years in prison for the murder of 21-year-old Deundrea Ford, a young mother who disappeared after leaving work along the East Freeway in September 2023.<\/p>\n
KPRC 2 News reporter Corley Peel spoke with Ford\u2019s family after the verdict. Ford\u2019s uncle, Kevin Carriere, said the family had hoped for a life sentence, but 75 years still delivers the justice Deundrea deserves.<\/p>\n
\u201c75 years is more time than I believe he has left to live. So, in our eyes, this is the death sentence to him,\u201d Carriere said.<\/p>\n
Ford was just 21 years old when she vanished after leaving her job at Diva\u2019s Bikini Sports Bar and Grill. Surveillance video captured her getting into a white Ford Transit van driven by Washington. When family and friends could not reach her, she was reported missing, and the search for her lasted months.<\/p>\n
Investigators eventually linked Washington to her disappearance and charged him with murder in January 2024.<\/p>\n
In March, Houston Police say a line worker discovered skeletal remains along Luna Road in Dallas. Months later, those remains were identified as Deundrea\u2019s.<\/p>\n
For Carriere, the sentence brings closure, but it cannot replace what the family lost.<\/p>\n
\u201cI miss her joy. I miss her smile. I miss her laugh. I miss the jokes. I just miss the moments that we had together,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe would always ask me to do something crazy for her. I learned how to do hair because of my niece,\u201d Carriere added. \u201cIt\u2019s small stuff like that I\u2019ll never get back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now that Washington is headed to prison, Ford\u2019s family says they can finally begin to grieve.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON \u2013 A Houston family waited nearly three years for justice, and on Thursday, they finally got it.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[294,152476,56,58,57,66,223,152477],"class_list":["post-440625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-crime","tag-deundrea-ford","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-local","tag-news","tag-yoland-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}