Before she left the house that night, Kaylyn Fiengo told someone she hoped she wouldn’t get hurt.
She was 18, pregnant, and somewhere deep down, she already knew.
Less than an hour later, police in Sanford, Florida found her inside her car.
One gunshot to the head, no pulse, two lives erased in a single pull of the trigger—hers and the unborn child she was carrying.
This wasn’t random, this wasn’t a robbery gone wrong; this was a calculated, execution-style killing, and the man who planned it had been sending her messages just hours before she died.
What you’re about to watch is one of the most disturbing true crime cases to come out of Florida in years.
A teenage mother who trusted the wrong man, saw the danger coming, and still couldn’t escape it.
A story that begins with her body discovered alone in the dark and ends 10 months later inside a courtroom where a judge delivers a sentence so severe it silenced the entire room: death row.
Sanford, Florida—a historic waterfront city in the heart of Seminole County, sitting along the southern shores of Lake Monroe.
Population around 66,000.
The kind of place with a charming downtown, a scenic riverwalk, and a nickname: the historic waterfront gateway.
Quiet, familiar, the last place you’d expect something like this.
This is where Kaylyn Marie Fiengo called home.
Born on February 20th, 2004, in nearby Longwood, Florida, Kaylyn grew up in a large, tight-knit family: three sisters, two brothers, and two parents who loved her.
She had the kind of personality that pulled people in without effort—warm, magnetic, the type of girl who walked into a room and left with three new friends.
At 16, she got pregnant by a fellow student.
It wasn’t easy, but Kaylyn didn’t run from it.
She made the hard choice to keep her son, finished high school at Jones High with her head up, and graduated ahead of most of her peers.
She was already mapping out college, already building something real.
By 2021, things with her son’s father had run their course and they separated, but both stayed committed to raising him together.
Kaylyn was moving forward; she was 18, ambitious, and had her whole life in front of her.
Then came Donovan Faison.
In early 2022, Kaylyn meets Donovan L. Faison on Instagram.
He’s 21, three years older, and knows exactly how to present himself.
What his profile doesn’t show, what Kaylyn had no way of knowing, is that Donovan already has a girlfriend.
From day one, she is nothing more than an affair to him, but to Kaylyn, it’s real.
She’s all in, not seeing anyone else, fully committed.
Then she finds out she’s pregnant.
She sends him the test results through Instagram.
His response is immediate and cold:
“Get rid of it.”
Kaylyn refuses.
That’s when he drops the truth on her: he has a girlfriend, their relationship was purely physical, and he wants nothing to do with this child.
Kaylyn doesn’t flinch; she’s keeping the baby.
Three days before she dies, Donovan asks to meet.
He tells her he wants to find a solution.
What he actually does is grab her phone without her knowing and send a message to himself, written as if it came from her, claiming the baby isn’t his.
Kaylyn catches it immediately and walks out.
He keeps calling, keeps texting, and on November 11th, 2022, he reaches out one final time, telling her he has a solution, that she needs to hear him out.
Kaylyn agrees to meet him at Coastline Park.
Bút this time, she isn’t going alone—not really.
She asks her close friend Simone to track her iPhone the entire time because she knew something felt wrong.
She told the father of her son the same thing when she dropped him off that night.
He asked her what was wrong, and she said:
“Nothing.”
Then, almost under her breath, she said she hoped she wouldn’t get hurt.
Those were the last words he ever heard from her.
Past 1:00 in the morning, her father starts calling.
No answer.
Then the phone rings, but it isn’t Kaylyn; it’s the police.
His daughter has been found dead inside her car.
Moving on to our next story tonight, police are searching for the gunman who shot and killed this young mother in Sanford.
West tonight, Gabe spoke to the woman’s heartbroken father who tells us that she was expecting her second child.
“I don’t know.”
A heartbroken father struggles to find the words.
Kaylyn Fiengo was just 18 years old.
Her dad, Ricky Fiengo, says she was a precious daughter, sister, and mother.
So many hearts are broken tonight because Kaylyn was found shot and killed in Sanford.
Police are looking for whoever is responsible.
“She was targeted, and that’s not, uh, you know…”
“You believe she was targeted?”
“I believe she was deep down, a feeling. I believe she was.”
A Sanford police officer was in the area of Coastline Park around 11:20 Friday night.
The officer found a vehicle that appeared to be running in a parking lot.
Sanford PD says when the officer came closer to the vehicle, Kaylyn was found inside, shot to death.
Police say Kaylyn was in the driver’s seat and had a gunshot wound.
Investigators believe she went to the location to try to meet up with someone she knew.
Her one-year-old son was staying with his father when his mom was killed.
“As soon as she gave, um, birth to her child, um, she took the mother role very serious. I feel devastated and, um, I mean, in a way the baby’s young, so I guess it’s better that he’s not going to feel that pain. It’s going to take a village. It’s going to take all of us to help and chip in and, uh, raise that child and let, let that child know how great her mother was.”
Her dad says Kaylyn was also expecting another child; she was 12 weeks pregnant.
Her family is urging anyone who knows anything about the murder to speak up for justice.
“Just do the right thing, and, and what would you do if it was your mother or your child? We all should stick together and, and not let these people run our communities and be scared of them.”
In a statement sent to West 2, Kaylyn’s mother said in part:
“Kaylyn was a loving, funny, and caring young woman. She loved her son immensely, and her brother and sisters. She graduated high school early as a young mother. She is a loss for many, but for her mom, an empty hole in my heart will never heal. She’s going to be very missed. Her brothers and sisters are going to miss her, and they’re just, they can’t take it well. And I got to be strong for them.”
Such a young woman.
Police are still searching for the gunman tonight who killed that young mother.
If you know anything that could help police in their investigation, you are asked to call that number right there on your screen.
It is the Crimeline TIPS line: 1-800-423-TIPS.
Remember, all information can remain anonymous.
When officers arrived at the scene, they didn’t need to run the plates to identify the victim.
While they were still processing the area, a woman in her 20s pulled up and parked nearby.
It was Simone, Kaylyn’s closest friend, who had been tracking her location through the iPhone app all night and came the moment something felt wrong.
Investigators pulled her aside immediately.
The first question was simple but pointed: why was Kaylyn having her phone tracked in the first place?
Simone didn’t hold back.
She told them everything: there had been serious conflict between Kaylyn and Donovan.
Kaylyn was rejected, a child, and betrayed his girlfriend, but not necessarily a killer.
They asked the jury to consider doubt.
The jury didn’t.
On October 27th, 2025, after roughly 2 hours of deliberation—remarkably short for a case of this magnitude—the jury returned a full guilty verdict on all three charges.
You could hear the deep breaths taken in the courtroom by Kaylyn Fiengo’s friends and family as the verdict was read out loud.
After a trial that started over two weeks ago with jury selection, Donovan Faison was found guilty on all counts.
“We the jury find the defendant guilty of first-degree murder.”
An overwhelming moment of relief for Kaylyn Fiengo’s loved ones as the jury’s verdict was announced.
“We’ve been waiting a long time for this.”
An emotional end, almost three years since Fiengo was found shot and killed in Sanford’s Coastline Park.
Investigators say Donovan Faison murdered her because she refused to terminate her pregnancy.
“Were you supposed to be up with her?”
“I wasn’t supposed to be.”
“Aware of your underwear?”
“I didn’t. We didn’t have no conversation with me about nothing.”
During closing arguments Monday, prosecutors played body camera video of Faison’s first interview with detectives.
“Lie after lie after lie after lie, i can read it line after line.”
And presented months of messages, including this exchange where they say Fiango told Faison she was pregnant, and his response was:
“Abortion.”
Faison’s attorneys poked holes in the police investigation and argued he may have made mistakes, but he is not a murderer.
“But at best, you have evidence of a man that’s cheating, of a man that possibly didn’t want to have another child. There’s no evidence of him being in the car, there’s no evidence of him coming around the front, there’s no evidence of her reaching for a purse, there’s no evidence of him pulling the trigger.”
Prosecutors say the motive was undeniable, and after Faison’s world fell apart when his girlfriend found out he had lied, cheated, and got another girl pregnant, he planned and executed Fiengo’s murder.
“The defendant thought about it, he devised the plan to kill an innocent victim, he carried out the plan in cold blood.”
Fiengo’s family says she will be missed, and she will be remembered for choosing her child.
“What she did was brave, regardless, right? She chose her child at the end of the day.”
Now that Faison has been found guilty, he could be sentenced to death.
The judge ordered both the state attorneys and the defense attorneys to be back at this courthouse on Wednesday to start the death penalty phase.
Then came December 5th, 2025—the sentencing hearing in a Sanford courtroom, Judge Donna Goerner presiding.
Donovan Faison’s family took the stand and begged.
Emotional testimony, tearful pleas, appeals for mercy, asking the court to spare his life and choose prison over execution.
It was the kind of desperation that fills a courtroom with silence.
It didn’t work.
Judge Goerner accepted the jury’s recommendation and delivered the sentence: death for the murder of Kaylyn Fiengo, death for the killing of her unborn child, and life in prison without the possibility of parole for carjacking with assault.
Two death sentences, one life sentence, no parole ever.
Donovan Faison was transferred out of that courtroom and onto Florida’s death row, where he will wait for the state to carry out what a jury of his peers unanimously decided he deserves.
Justice for Kaylyn and for the child who never got the chance to take a single breath.
Disclaimer : This content may be created by AI for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.
