It was an ordinary November afternoon in Nashville. Eighteen-year-old Jillian Ludwig, a freshman at Belmont University, had laced up her sneakers and gone out for a walk — a simple, quiet break from college life. She had no way of knowing it would be her last.

Jillian never came back from that walk.

A stray bullet, fired blocks away during an unrelated shooting, struck her in the head. She wasn’t discovered for nearly an hour. By the time she reached the hospital, her condition was described as “extremely critical.” Overnight, the news no family should ever hear was delivered: Jillian was gone.

Her death sent shockwaves across Tennessee in 2023, when this happened.
Not only for its senselessness, but because of who pulled the trigger and how he was free in the first place.