Police say Kierra Timmons, 26, was found dead after friends asked officers to check on her at an apartment on Brittany Park Drive.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A 26-year-old woman was found strangled inside an Antioch apartment, and police are searching for her boyfriend after his driver’s license was found in the victim’s car on an Interstate 24 bridge over the Cumberland River, authorities said.
Kierra Timmons’ death has become a two-state search centered on her boyfriend, Darrion Young, 37, who is named in a criminal homicide warrant but had not been found as of Sunday, March 22. Metro Nashville police say Timmons was killed inside Young’s apartment on Brittany Park Drive, while Kentucky State Police became involved after her red Dodge Charger was discovered abandoned on the I-24 bridge Friday night. The case now carries two urgent questions: where Young is, and whether investigators are dealing with a fugitive or a recovery effort in the river below.
The known timeline begins late Friday, March 13, when Kentucky State Police found Timmons’ Dodge Charger on the bridge crossing the Cumberland River. Police said the engine was still running, the hazard flashers were on and the driver’s door was open. Investigators also found Young’s driver’s license inside the car. Metro Nashville police said Young had last been seen in Nashville earlier that day, hours before the vehicle was discovered. By Saturday morning, concern had shifted back to Antioch, where two of Timmons’ friends asked officers to go with them to an apartment on Brittany Park Drive for a welfare check. Inside, police found Timmons dead. The medical finding released publicly was blunt: she had been strangled. The case, first described as a suspected strangulation death, quickly moved into a homicide investigation as detectives tied the death to a domestic relationship and then publicly identified Young as the suspect.
Police have released only a narrow set of facts about what happened inside the apartment and have not publicly described a struggle, a weapon or any signs of forced entry. What they have said is that the homicide warrant names Young in the killing of his girlfriend and places the crime scene inside his apartment. That detail is important because it gives detectives a fixed location even as the suspect’s whereabouts remain unknown. Investigators from Metro Nashville’s Homicide Unit are working with Kentucky State Police because the victim’s car turned up across the state line route near the river. Authorities have said they have not ruled out the possibility that Young jumped into the Cumberland after the car was left on the bridge. They have not said whether dive teams, sonar or other search methods have been used, and they have not announced any verified sighting of Young after Friday in Nashville. That leaves the public record divided between what is known with confidence and what remains unresolved.
Outside the police search, Timmons’ death has been described by relatives as a shattering loss for a close-knit family. In television interviews, her sister, Kalee Timmons, recalled seeing Kierra on her birthday just two days before officers found her dead. Family members said the visit had been ordinary and warm, the kind of recent memory that now carries painful weight because nothing in it signaled that it would be their last. One relative said Kierra “didn’t deserve to be taken out of this world,” a remark that captured both the family’s grief and its frustration as the search for Young stretched into another day. Publicly available details about Timmons’ life remain limited, and police have not released an extended biography beyond her age and name. But the family’s comments have made clear that, to those closest to her, this is not only a homicide case with a warrant attached. It is the sudden loss of a daughter, sister and loved one whose death has turned a family’s private mourning into a public plea for answers.
The procedural posture of the case is also unusually fluid. Young has been named in a criminal homicide warrant, which means investigators say they have enough evidence to identify him formally as the suspect in Timmons’ killing. At the same time, no public arrest had been announced by Sunday, and police had not said whether they expect a capture, a recovery operation or both. Metro Nashville police and Kentucky State Police have asked anyone who sees Young or knows where he is to contact Crime Stoppers. Investigators have not publicly described any upcoming court hearing, extradition step or charging document beyond the homicide warrant already announced. Those steps would become clearer only if Young is found alive and taken into custody. If he is not, the case could shift toward evidence review, autopsy findings, forensic processing and witness interviews without the immediate court appearances that usually follow a homicide arrest. In either event, detectives are likely to keep building the timeline through phone records, surveillance footage, vehicle movements and interviews with friends and relatives who had recent contact with the couple.
The scene itself adds a stark visual thread to a case that is already drawing wide attention in Middle Tennessee: an empty car left running on a bridge at night, hazard lights flashing, a door left open to the air above the river. By the next morning, that image was tied to the apartment in Antioch where Timmons was found dead. For neighbors and relatives, the details have turned familiar places into markers of violence and uncertainty. Brittany Park Drive became the focus of a homicide inquiry. The I-24 bridge became the possible last known point in the suspect’s path. Friends became the people who pushed for the welfare check that led officers to Timmons. Relatives became the public voice of mourning. Their comments have stayed direct and personal, centered less on legal language than on the life that was cut short. For now, the family’s grief and the official search are moving side by side, one shaped by loss, the other by unanswered questions about where Young went after Timmons was killed.
As of Sunday, March 22, Young had not been located publicly, and no additional arrest announcement had been made. The next milestone is whether investigators find him or release new evidence that fills in the hours between the abandoned car on March 13 and the welfare check that led officers to Timmons on March 14.
Author note: Last updated March 22, 2026.