Daughters Lead Police To Mother’s Dead Body

On a quiet April evening in DeRidder, Louisiana, the smell of burning eggs drifted down the hallway of a modest single‑story home. The stove was on, a frying pan forgotten, the edges of the eggs crisping and curling in the heat.

In the living room, four little girls waited.

They were old enough to know something was wrong, but too young to understand just how wrong. Their mother, 28‑year‑old Ashley Fish, had gone into the bathroom and hadn’t come out. The door was closed. Locked.

The youngest girls fussed and whined. The oldest, nine‑year‑old Riley, felt that tightening in her chest that children feel when the world stops making sense. She had asked, then knocked, then called for her mother through the door.

No answer.

The eggs continued to burn.

Somewhere outside, a truck engine turned over, then faded away into the distance. A man sat alone in a parking lot, staring at his hands on the steering wheel, rehearsing the words he would say to the operator.

In a small dispatch center miles away, a 911 call rang through.

“911, where’s your emergency?”

A calm male voice replied, “Hi, I need to report a crime.”

The address came next: a house on Northridge Drive in DeRidder, Louisiana.

Then the line went dead.

The dispatcher tried to call back. The caller didn’t answer. The log showed only a brief call, a vague mention of a “crime,” and an address where no one was picking up the phone.

The dispatcher flagged it as urgent. Officers were dispatched.

Officer Josh Stanford sped toward Northridge Drive, lights on, his mind cycling through the possibilities: a domestic dispute, a break‑in, a robbery gone bad. He had no way of knowing that within minutes he would find four traumatized children, a young mother dead on the bathroom floor, and a suspect who was both closer and farther away than anyone expected.

“The Door Was Locked”

The house on Northridge Drive was like many others in the small city: a simple, wood‑frame structure with a short driveway, a patch of grass, a front door that opened directly into the living room. If not for the police car outside, nothing about it would have attracted a second glance.

Officer Stanford knocked and opened the door.

“You all right, babe?” he called gently to the oldest girl once inside. “The door was locked in the room?”

Riley, clutching one of her younger sisters by the hand, nodded. “Yeah.”

Her voice trembled, but she tried to stay composed. She was nine, and in a matter of minutes that evening she had become the closest thing her siblings had to an adult.

“Can you sit right here for me?” Stanford asked, guiding her toward a safer spot away from the kitchen.

He glanced toward the stove. The eggs were burning, the pan smoking lightly. The air smelled acrid.

“Is anybody in there?” he asked, nodding toward the bathroom at the end of the hall.

“No,” Riley answered. “My sisters are inside right there.”

She meant inside the house, not the bathroom.

Stanford’s training and instincts were screaming at him now. A male caller had reported a crime, given this address, and hung up. The door had been locked. The stove was on, unattended. The children were alone. The bathroom door was closed.

“Okay,” he said. “Y’all come in here.” He motioned to the girls. “Come here. Stay in here, stay in here.”

He radioed in quickly: he had found a woman with a single bullet wound to the right side of her head. She appeared to have been dead for some time—but not long. The body was still warm, blood slowly pooling, the wound still oozing.

Ashley was slumped in the bathroom, half on the floor, half against the tub. There were no signs of a struggle in the rest of the house. No overturned furniture, no broken glass, no signs of a break‑in.

But something was terribly wrong.

As the officer processed the scene, another, more immediate thought cut through: the children. Four little girls, their entire world ripped away in a single gunshot.

He stepped back out into the living room.

“Come here,” he called to them. “Come here.”

The younger ones hesitated, clinging to each other. A neighbor stepped in. She recognized the children instantly; this was a small community, where people knew names, faces, routines.

“Do you know these children?” the officer asked her.

“Yes,” the neighbor said. “They’re our neighbors.”

“Do you have parents here?”

“Yes,” she answered. “Can you take them to a secure place for me?”

The neighbor nodded, her own face pale. “Riley, come help me,” she said softly.

In an act of courage no child should ever have to perform, Riley took her sisters by the hand and walked them across the street, away from the burning eggs and the bathroom door and the body inside.

For now, the children were safe.

Their mother was not.

And the man who had called 911 was nowhere to be found.

A Familiar Name

As the scene was secured, officers began the grim task of formally identifying the victim. They turned off the stove, opened windows to clear the smoke, and started looking for documents, a wallet, mail—anything that had a name on it.

One officer found it in a routine place: her purse.

“Ashley Fish,” he read aloud.

The lead detective, who had just arrived, froze.

“Say that again,” he asked.

“Ashley Fish.”

The name wasn’t just another file to him. Ashley wasn’t just a stranger who had met a violent end.

He knew her.

He had gone to school with her, seen her in the halls of East Beauregard, laughed with her at teenage events. She had married her high school sweetheart, John Fish. They’d had their first child young and gone on to have three more daughters. For a time, she had lived in Texas, then moved back to Louisiana.

Now she was lying on the bathroom floor of a house in DeRidder, a bullet hole in her head.

The familiarity hit the detective like a gut punch. It could have clouded his judgment. Instead, it sharpened his resolve.

He needed to know what had happened. He needed to know who had done this to her.

And he needed to make sure they faced justice.

The Girl Who Saw Too Much

While investigators photographed the scene and secured evidence, the girls were taken in by their grandparents and neighbors. The youngest two were barely old enough to grasp the situation. Death, to a four‑year‑old, is a concept closer to sleep or fairy tales than reality.

The six‑year‑old and four‑year‑old were more concerned about the kinds of questions children ask in the wake of tragedy: “Is Mommy an angel now? Can she fly? Can she see us?”

But the detectives quickly learned that one child, Riley, had seen something she wished she hadn’t.

“The one you want to talk to is Riley,” the grandfather told the officers quietly. “She supposedly told my wife that she saw something. And she didn’t want to talk about it.”

Riley had walked down that hallway. She had knocked on that bathroom door. She had seen something—maybe everything—that happened afterward. And she was old enough to remember.

But for now, the priority was not her testimony. It was her safety.

The officers watched as her grandfather picked her up, wrapping her in his arms, her small face pressed against his chest.

Somewhere down the hallway, in the bathroom, the crime scene techs continued their work.

A Calm Voice on the Phone

The first step in solving a murder is often the most basic: identify who was there. Who had access. Who had motive.

In this case, the trail began with the 911 call.

The male caller had given an address, said he needed to report a crime, and hung up. Now police needed to know who he was—and why he hadn’t stayed at the scene.

Officers canvassed the neighborhood, knocking on doors, asking if anyone had seen or heard anything. A teenage boy mowing a lawn had seen a vehicle leaving the driveway earlier: a black truck pulling away.

Another neighbor offered ring camera footage showing a black pickup leaving just minutes before the 911 call.

Detectives turned to the woman next door, who rushed up with worry written all over her face.

“The girls are at my house,” she told them. “Can you tell us what’s going on?”

“It’s not good,” the detective said gently. “Is she…is she alive?” the neighbor asked, her voice breaking.

“No,” he said. “She’s not.”

The neighbor covered her face. “Was she shot?”

“Yes,” he confirmed.

The neighbor took a breath, gathering herself. “There was a truck here,” she said. “She has a significant other. She’s going through a divorce. They’re legally separated, but he was here. The black truck was here.”

“Do you think he shot her?” the detective asked.

The neighbor hesitated. She didn’t want to accuse without proof. “As far as I know, her… I’m assuming it was T,” she said. “Tyler was the person that was here. I don’t know if that was his truck. He usually drives a black truck. And then her husband’s name is John. John Fish.”

The detectives now had two names: John, the ex‑husband, and Tyler, the new boyfriend.

The Ring camera and the lawn‑mower boy’s statement both pointed to the black truck leaving just before the 911 call.

It was a start.

As officers prepared to track down Tyler, another call came into dispatch.

It was the killer.

“I Need to Turn Myself In”

“Hi, I need to turn myself into the police,” the male caller said calmly.

The dispatcher’s tone shifted instantly.

“Okay. I don’t know how to do this,” he said. “Are you wanted? Do you have an active warrant?” she asked.

“No, I just committed a crime.”

“What crime did you commit?” she asked.

“I shot somebody.”

“Okay. Where are you located?”

“I’m at Burkes Outlet in DeRidder. I’m in the parking lot and I’m just going to wait here to get picked up.”

“Who did you shoot?” she asked.

“A woman.”

“What is her name?”

“Ashley Fish.”

Officers raced to the Burkes Outlet parking lot, on high alert. A man who had just confessed to shooting someone might be armed, volatile, unpredictable. They didn’t know if he still had the weapon. They didn’t know if he was planning suicide‑by‑cop. They didn’t know if he was truly turning himself in or setting them up for an ambush.

They approached cars with weapons drawn, scanning for movement.

The suspect was sitting in his truck.

He appeared composed. Calm. Almost eerily so, given what he had just done.

“Okay, the easiest way to do this,” an officer instructed, “is sit down on your foot and just turn your legs in.” They cuffed him without incident.

The suspect was identified as 34‑year‑old Tyler Darakowski—Ashley’s boyfriend.

In his vehicle, officers found no gun.

They did find prescription bottles, vials of testosterone, and syringes. Anabolic substances that can, in some individuals, heighten irritability, impulsivity, and aggression.

Tyler, however, was polite. Cooperative. He didn’t rant or rage. If anything, he seemed controlled—almost detached.

But that control, detectives would later realize, was part of a plan: a calculated attempt to frame what had happened not as murder, but as self‑defense.

A Loaded Gun, A Deadly Story

Back at the scene, detectives continued their work. They needed to understand the physical reality of Ashley’s death before they could properly confront Tyler about his version of events.

The pistol was found at the scene. The serial number traced back not to Tyler, but to Ashley herself. The gun was legally hers.

This, at least, partially supported Tyler’s inevitable claim: that the gun wasn’t his, that she had introduced it into the situation.

The lack of overturned furniture or obvious signs of struggle in the house raised another unsettling possibility: could this have been a suicide? Had Ashley shot herself?

But something about that idea felt wrong. This was a young mother with four children in the house, cooking dinner, texting their father minutes earlier.

And then there were the neighbors and family members.

She had been outside earlier that afternoon chatting with neighbors. She had been frustrated with Tyler, but not suicidal. She had texted John, her ex‑husband, about Tyler refusing to leave.

Up to the moment of her death, she had been actively trying to protect her children and her future.

The detectives’ instincts screamed that this was not self‑harm.

It was homicide.

Still, instinct wasn’t enough. They needed facts strong enough to withstand court scrutiny.

As they waited for forensic reports and phone extractions, they turned to the people who knew Ashley and Tyler best.

“He Needs to Go”

Ashley’s family members arrived one by one—parents, siblings, close relatives. Each was devastated. And each, when asked about Tyler, said variations of the same thing.

They didn’t trust him.

They didn’t like him.

They had been worried for Ashley for months.

Her father admitted that at one point he’d even threatened Tyler, telling him to leave his daughter and granddaughters alone.

“I wanted him to leave,” he said. “Get out of there. Leave the girls alone. I said, ‘I’ll just shoot you.’ I know it’s bad. I was just… heated. But I wanted him gone.”

Another family member recalled a disturbing first impression: Tyler arriving, greeting them briefly, then walking inside, picking up Ashley’s guitar, propping his leg arrogantly on the kids’ trampoline in the yard, and playing as he stared at the moon.

“I was like, ‘Ashley, what is he doing?’ I didn’t want to hear this prick playing. I just wanted to go inside.”

Still another relative recounted an incident where an argument turned physical enough for him to punch Tyler in the head. “I told her, ‘He needs to go. Get this done. Get him on the road.’”

In the last couple of weeks before her death, Ashley had told family members she’d made up her mind. Tyler had to go. This time, for good.

“She said, ‘I will be alone,’” one relative remembered. “No boyfriend. No new guy. Just her and the kids. She wanted to reset.”

But Tyler didn’t go.

Instead, he stayed.

And Ashley died.

A Marriage Left Behind

While Tyler sat in an interrogation room, waiting for someone to come in and hear his story, detectives brought in Ashley’s ex‑husband, John.

An hour after Ashley’s body was discovered, John arrived at the station. His face was drawn, stunned, struggling to process the news he’d been given over the phone: the mother of his children was gone.

He and Ashley had been together for over a decade. They’d had their first child young, navigating the rough edges of early adulthood together. Though their marriage eventually broke down, they’d remained in close contact, co‑parenting four daughters.

He knew she’d started seeing someone new—Tyler. He also knew there were rules in their custody arrangement: no overnight guests, no significant others spending the night.

It was a rule Ashley had broken with Tyler.

John, however, hadn’t used that against her.

He just wanted the kids safe.

Sitting across from the detective, he seemed less interested in blaming anyone than in understanding what had happened—and in figuring out how he would tell his daughters that their mother was never coming home.

“I just want to let them know that she’s no longer with us,” he said, voice cracking. “Mom’s no longer with us. She’s an angel now.”

He could already imagine the questions he’d get from the younger two: Where is she? Can she see us? Can she fly?

But what haunted him most was a series of messages from earlier that evening—Ashley’s last cries for help that he hadn’t fully understood.

“He Won’t Leave”

At around 6:00 p.m. that evening, John had received a call and texts from Ashley.

When he first saw Tyler’s name pop up on his phone, he rolled his eyes. “We got some bull crap,” he had thought at the time. “They’re in some kind of argument, trying to drag me into it. I don’t want to be part of your drama.”

Up until then, nothing in their history had suggested that Ashley or the children were in immediate danger. There had been arguments, frustrations, raised voices, but nothing like this.

“I texted back, ‘I’m not trying to get in y’all’s drama,’” he said.

That’s when Ashley sent another message: “He won’t leave.”

“As soon as I got that,” John told the detective, “when I actually looked and saw ‘he’s not leaving,’ I called.”

Ashley answered.

“Hello.”

“What’s going on?” John had asked. “Is he mad because he’s got to leave? Are my kids okay? Are my kids safe?”

“Yes,” she had said. The kids were safe. She just wanted Tyler gone.

“I was a little concerned,” John admitted, “but I wasn’t super… I just thought they were arguing again. I was ready for him to leave.”

He hung up, then texted Ashley: “Talk to my kids, please.”

That was at 6:55 p.m.

He never heard from her again.

Shortly thereafter, the last message went unanswered, the call unreturned. Somewhere between that phone call and the moment Officer Stanford stepped into the house, Ashley had gone from a frustrated, worried mother dealing with a difficult boyfriend to a homicide victim lying in her own bathroom.

“I just thought it was weird,” John said quietly. “Odd. But I didn’t think…this.”

The Man in the Interrogation Room

While detectives gathered statements from neighbors and family, Tyler sat in a small room at the station, alone with his thoughts.

He had been there for hours.

The calm he’d shown in the parking lot had begun to fray. He was restless, shifting in his chair, his mind looping through the events of the evening and the possible futures stretching out before him.

With the right lawyer, he might persuade a jury that this had been an accident, an act of self‑defense. Without one, every word he said could become another nail in the coffin of his freedom.

When the detective finally entered the room, turned on a recorder, and sat down across from him, Tyler seemed almost relieved to talk. Almost.

“I think I need to talk about what happened tonight,” he said cautiously. “I don’t know how long I’d have to wait for a lawyer to get here. I just… want to talk about what happened.”

From the outset, the detective suspected Tyler had a plan—to appear cooperative, rational, and above all, not like a cold‑blooded killer.

So he let him talk.

“I Didn’t Want to Take a Mother Away from Her Kids”

Tyler began by describing what he called “an altercation.”

“This woman and I got in an altercation last night,” he said, notably referring to Ashley only as “this woman.” “Things were kind of falling out between the two of us, just relationally, and I was getting ready to move back to Oregon.”

In his telling, Ashley was unstable, unpredictable. He was the reasonable one. He claimed that as he was preparing to leave the relationship, she grabbed a gun from her bedside drawer.

“She pulled out… she had a gun in her drawer,” he said. “She loaded it and was pointing it at me and we started fighting and it went off.”

He insisted he had never initiated violence with her.

“I’m not the one that pulled the gun,” he said. “I don’t have the gun. I don’t want the gun. I don’t want it in disputes.”

He described trying to de‑escalate, taking the gun only after the shot, locking the bedroom door to keep the kids out, then leaving because, as he put it, “I didn’t know what the hell to do.”

“There were four children in the house,” he said. “I don’t want to take a mother away from her four kids. That’s not my thing.”

But the words rang hollow. This wasn’t a story told in raw grief. It sounded rehearsed—like a narrative built to fit around the unavoidable facts: Ashley was dead, he had fired the gun, and he had fled.

Detectives listened, took notes, and waited for the cracks to appear.

They didn’t have to wait long.

A Man Trapped—or So He Claimed

Tyler painted himself as a man trapped in a relationship he never wanted.

He spoke about his previous marriage in Oregon, how he had been “proud to be married” and “felt like a man of honor.” He said he had never wanted to leave that marriage, but somehow found himself in this “weird relationship” with Ashley.

He claimed he had felt guilty being with her, that he didn’t want to be the reason a man lost his family.

“I’ve felt a lot of guilt in my life in this relationship,” he said. “I’ve thought about leaving multiple times. I’ve wanted to leave multiple times.”

But detectives already had evidence contradicting this: love letters between Tyler and his ex‑wife, full of longing and plans to reunite; texts showing Ashley pleading with him to leave and him dragging his feet; messages describing her frustration that he wouldn’t go.

“To my love,” one letter from his ex‑wife read. “By the time you see this letter, you’re miles away from me. You defeated the world to get to me. I’m never going to forget about you. Don’t forget about me. I hope you’re ready for when we meet again.”

This was not a man imprisoned in a relationship he couldn’t escape. He had left his marriage by choice. He was already fantasizing about a future reunion with his ex‑wife.

If he’d wanted to leave Ashley, he could have.

Instead, he stayed.

And when she finally decided to end the relationship for good, something inside him snapped.

Retaliation and Masculinity

As the interrogation went on, Tyler’s carefully controlled narrative began to fray. When the detective asked if Ashley had ever been physical with him, he described being hit with slippers or shoes—annoying, disrespectful, but hardly life‑threatening.

“She hit me with like slippers,” he said. “I don’t want to sound like a… but she just slapped me with her slippers when she was mad.”

Then he revealed something more troubling.

Because of their custody agreement, Ashley wasn’t allowed overnight guests. Tyler knew this. He knew that if John found out he’d been staying over, it could cost Ashley custody of the kids.

And as their relationship declined, that became his weapon.

“And so our relationship was really falling out here,” he admitted. “I threatened to tell him the truth when I was getting ready to leave. I was going to call her husband and be like, ‘I have been spending the night here. I don’t know what legal ramifications it’s going to have for you guys and your life and your world. I’ve been in this relationship with you. This relationship has hurt me in a lot of ways. I’ve sacrificed a lot of things. And for me to go and have closure, I think that I’m just going to let John know the whole truth.’”

It was a calculated move: if Ashley wouldn’t bend to him, he’d take away the thing she loved most—her children. He knew exactly how devastating that threat was.

In that moment, Tyler revealed how quickly he was willing to retaliate, how easily he could justify harming her “for closure.”

He still described himself as a man of honor.

The detective saw something else: a man whose ego couldn’t tolerate losing control.

The Gun in the Bathroom

According to Tyler, the situation escalated suddenly in the bathroom.

He claimed Ashley loaded the gun in front of him, cocked it, and pointed it at him. He said they struggled, wrestling for control of the weapon, his arms around her in what he described as a “chokehold kind of thing,” the gun somewhere between their faces.

“It went from zero to a thousand in one blink of an eye,” he insisted. “I was just talking with her, having a normal conversation, and she’s loading a gun in front of my face.”

He repeated the same idea: he didn’t want to hurt her, didn’t mean to do anything, felt that he was fighting for his life.

The detective asked the crucial question: at any point, did Tyler have full control of the gun?

“Not until it was over,” Tyler said. “Not until she was on the ground.”

He described the shot as almost accidental, the culmination of two minutes of chaotic struggle.

“I stood there and I couldn’t believe what happened,” he said. “The first thing I thought was the kids. I had to call somebody. I had to stand up for what I’ve done.”

It was a neat story: a tragic accident, provoked by an unstable woman with a gun, ending in a single, unintended shot.

But even as Tyler spoke, forensic evidence was coming in that would rip his story apart.

The Evidence That Changed Everything

While Tyler talked in the interrogation room, forensic analysts examined Ashley’s body and the weapon. Two findings stood out.

First, when Ashley’s body was found, her phone was still clutched in her right hand—her dominant hand. Her other hand was not holding a gun. If she’d been pointing a weapon at Tyler in the final moments, the position of her body and the phone made little sense.

Second, a detail from the autopsy and gun examination was decisive: Ashley’s hair was found inside the barrel of the gun. Combined with skull fracture patterns, this indicated that the barrel had been pressed firmly against her head when fired.

This was not a wild shot during a struggle. Not a gun waving around haphazardly in a desperate fight.

This was an execution‑style shot.

The gun had been placed against Ashley’s head and fired with deliberate contact.

When the detective reentered the interrogation room armed with this knowledge, his attitude shifted. Tyler sensed it. His composure began to fracture.

Cracks in the Calm

“Do you feel like it probably just got out of hand?” the detective asked.

“Yes,” Tyler said. “I think our whole relationship was out of hand. I’ve never had someone do that to me—get that mad at me that they load a weapon in their house with the kids asleep.”

He started reaching further to justify his fear, suddenly recalling that Ashley had supposedly pulled a gun on him two nights earlier as well—an incident he had never mentioned before.

“I don’t even know why I let that go,” he said. “I should have left the house.”

The detective followed the logic to its obvious conclusion: if Tyler truly believed Ashley was willing to shoot him, why had he stayed? Why hadn’t he walked out the door, gotten in his truck, and never come back?

He didn’t have a good answer.

“I guess… is it fair to say I was afraid for my life?” Tyler asked, almost as if he were seeking legal advice.

“Yes, it’s fair to say that,” the detective replied. But fairness of phrasing wasn’t the issue. The issue was reality.

Tyler grew more agitated. “One bullet goes off and you’re—” he broke off, swearing. “I didn’t try to murder anybody. I didn’t try to kill anyone. I don’t know what happened.”

But the forensic evidence knew.

Hair in the barrel.

A pressed contact shot.

Phone in the dominant hand.

No injuries on Tyler consistent with a prolonged struggle. No signs of defensive wounds on Ashley.

The detective realized they’d reached a point of diminishing returns. Push harder now, and Tyler might shut down entirely or lawyer up.

Then again, that was his right.

And that’s exactly what he did.

“I Know What You’re Trying to Do”

As the questions became more pointed, Tyler’s anxiety spiked.

“We’re still missing some things that I feel you’re kind of rushing through,” the detective said.

Tyler stared at the table. “I think… I think processing today, I just want to feel like someone’s on my side,” he said. “I’ve seen this in the movies. I know what you’re trying to do. The more I tell now, the better it looks.”

He paused, then admitted something revealing.

“I’m trying to be really careful. If I mess up, if I say something stupid… the more I talk, the more it’s going to look like, ‘Oh, man, dude.’ The whole world, if they know what just happened, is probably like, ‘That guy’s a piece of…’ I feel really alone. My family’s not here. No one’s here. Ashley’s not here either, and I’m trying to process that.”

The detective nodded. He understood the storm of fear and self‑preservation swirling in Tyler’s mind.

But understanding didn’t mean agreeing.

“What we’re going to do,” the detective said gently, “is refrain from any more questions. If you feel compelled to re‑engage, you’re welcome to. But we’re done for now.”

Tyler looked up. “I appreciate you guys being patient,” he said. “I know you guys got people to talk to. I’m not trying to tell you I don’t want your counsel. I just feel like… maybe I shouldn’t say anything else without someone on my side.”

He asked for a lawyer.

The interview ended.

Trial and Sentence

With the interrogation over, the case moved into a different phase.

The physical evidence was strong:

The gun belonged to Ashley, but
Her hair in the barrel and the contact wound proved the shot was deliberate, not wild.
Her phone in her dominant hand suggested she wasn’t holding the weapon at the time.
There were no signs of forced entry or struggle consistent with a prolonged fight.
Tyler had threatened to expose her custody violation as leverage.
Ashley had told multiple people she wanted him gone for good.
She had texted that he “wouldn’t leave” shortly before her death.
He had left the house without calling 911 from the scene, leaving four children alone with their mother’s body and a burning stove.

On the basis of this and his own admission that he fired the gun, Tyler was charged with second‑degree murder and four counts of child abandonment.

In court, he maintained that he had acted in self‑defense—that he was the one in danger, that he had been forced into a fight for his life.

The state’s case told a different story: a man enraged by rejection, humiliated by the end of a relationship he believed he controlled, threatening to ruin Ashley’s life by destroying her custody, then pressing a gun to her head and pulling the trigger.

The jury listened to the evidence: the forensic experts, the neighbors, the family members, the ex‑husband, the investigation timeline. They heard about the anabolic drugs in Tyler’s vehicle and the pattern of control and manipulation in the relationship.

They weighed Tyler’s calm 911 confession against the reality of what he had done.

They found him guilty on all counts.

He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Four Daughters, One Future

For Ashley’s daughters, the trial was just background noise to the larger catastrophe of their mother’s absence.

They had lost her in the most brutal way possible—not to illness or accident, but to violence inflicted in their own home.

Their father, John, now had to raise them knowing that the last hours of their mother’s life had been filled with fear and conflict. He had to answer their questions about where she had gone and why. He had to help them navigate birthdays and holidays with an empty chair at the table.

Ashley’s parents and siblings stepped in, forming a safety net around the girls. Therapy became essential, not optional—trauma like theirs doesn’t just fade with time. It has to be worked through, gently and patiently, over years.

Members of the community, moved by the tragedy, rallied to support the children. A GoFundMe was created to help with therapy and educational expenses. The organizers donated the first $10,000 themselves, hoping others would follow.

No amount of money could replace what the girls had lost.

But it could help give them a chance.

A Detective’s Burden

For the lead detective, this was never just “a case.”

It was Ashley.

A girl he’d once known, whose name he recognized on a purse ID, whose family sat across from him in shock and grief, whose daughters’ names he would carry in his mind long after the verdict was read.

It’s one thing to fight for justice for a stranger.

It’s another to fight for someone you remember laughing in high school hallways, someone whose life story you already partly know.

In the end, justice in its narrow legal sense was served. Tyler will likely die in prison. The state acknowledged, through conviction and sentence, that this was not an accident, not self‑defense, but murder.

But justice in the broader sense—restoring what was taken—was impossible.

All that remained was the hope that by telling Ashley’s story, by naming what happened for what it was, by supporting the children she left behind, some measure of good might grow out of unbearable loss.

The Echo of a Locked Door

The story of Ashley Fish is not just about one terrible evening in DeRidder. It’s about patterns that can be found in countless homes: controlling partners, slowly escalating conflicts, threats that are dismissed—by victims, by families, sometimes even by authorities—as “drama” or “just relationship stuff.”

Ashley texted that he wouldn’t leave.

She told people she was worried.

Her family sensed danger.

They were right.

But like so many victims of domestic violence, Ashley didn’t get out in time—not because she was weak or foolish, but because leaving is dangerous, and complicated, and wrapped in love, guilt, hope, and fear.

In the end, the last person to see Ashley alive in that bathroom was the man who killed her.

The last person to knock on the locked door was her oldest daughter.

The last voice she heard from outside that room, hours before, was her ex‑husband asking, “Are my kids safe?”

The answer then had been yes.

Minutes later, it was no.

Ashley’s story is, at its core, the story of a loving mother who deserved better, four children who deserved to grow up with her, and a community forced to face the reality that sometimes the greatest danger is not a stranger in the night, but someone already inside the house.

Her life was more than the way she died.

But the way she died should never be forgotten.