Kaylin Fiengo had grown up fast. But when the 18-year-old agreed to meet her boyfriend one November night, she had no idea it would be the last decision she’d ever make.
Kaylin Fiengo was still just a teenager, but she’d certainly grown up fast. Kaylin, 18, was already a mum to her one-year-old son from a previous relationship and had just found out she was pregnant again.
The young woman was about to become a single mum-of-two.
It was 2022, and Kaylin had been dating Donovan Faison, but their relationship wasn’t straightforward at all. Faison was still living with another woman, and they shared a child together. The woman suspected Faison was being unfaithful after seeing her car, which Faison had borrowed, parked at Kaylin’s house in Sanford, Florida, in August of that year.
Faison had begged forgiveness and while the former couple had broken up, they remained living together as they tried to work through their problems. But Faison was also still seeing Kaylin.
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When Kaylin found out she was pregnant, she did two pregnancy tests just to make sure, then sent a picture of them to Faison. She was excited about being a mum again, but Faison’s reaction was the opposite. At first, he accused her of lying. Then he followed up by texting “Abortion!!!”
Kaylin must have been disappointed, but she refused a termination and told her friends and family that she was having another baby. By November, Kaylin had completed her first trimester and had found out she was having another boy. She treasured the ultrasound pictures of her unborn son. Faison had no interest in the baby and continued to argue with Kaylin about her decision.
Slumped in the car
On the night of 11 November, Faison told Kaylin to meet him at the car park at Coastline Park in Sanford. She told friends she was going to see him and took the ultrasound of their baby to show him.
Later that night, the police were doing a routine patrol in the area and saw a Nissan parked with the engine running. When they approached, they saw blood on the ground of the driver’s side door and the driver’s window was down. There was a woman slumped in the driver’s seat. It was Kaylin. She had been shot in the head. A bullet casing lay near the body, along with the ultrasound picture of her unborn baby.
As emergency services descended on the area, a friend of Kaylin arrived at the scene. They said they hadn’t heard from her and had used the Find My iPhone app to track her to the park. They told the police Kaylin had been there to meet Faison to talk about the pregnancy. Officers started to investigate whether Faison had lured her into a trap.
Kaylin’s family were distraught. Her son was just a baby. Her dad told the local press that his daughter took being a mother very seriously. “I feel devastated,” he said. “It’s going to take all of us to help and chip in to raise that child and let that child know how great his mother was.”
Kaylin’s mother said her daughter was “vivacious, loving, funny and caring”. “She graduated high school early as a young mother, with her cap saying, ‘Mommy did it,’” her statement said. “She is a loss for many, but for her mom an empty hole in my heart that will never heal.”
Frightened of Faison
Over the next few months, the police investigated the killing. Kaylin’s friends told officers that Faison had offered to buy her a medication used to terminate an early pregnancy and that he’d made it clear he didn’t want another baby. Investigators determined that during the meeting in the car park, Faison had taken Kaylin’s phone and had sent messages to himself saying “the baby is not Donovan’s”.
The father of Kaylin’s first son told the police she had been worried about meeting with Faison that night as he might “punch her in the stomach” when they met. It showed just how frightened she was but she met with Faison in desperation to change his mind about their baby.
Faison’s girlfriend told the police that after finding out he’d been unfaithful they had shared locations on their phones to try and rebuild the trust between them. Faison had told her Kaylin would not be having his baby. She didn’t know what that meant but said that if she did have the baby, she wanted a paternity test and if the baby was his, their relationship was over. It was clear Faison was under pressure.
The police looked at Faison’s phone records and saw that before the shooting, he’d looked up how to delete tracking history and search history. On the day of the shooting, he’d told his girlfriend he was visiting his mother, which was near the park, but had then taken the SIM card out of his mobile so his location couldn’t be tracked.
Faison was arrested in August 2023 and charged with first-degree premeditated murder and the killing of an unborn child by injury to the mother. He pleaded not guilty.
At the trial, the prosecution said Faison was “angry and felt pressured” by the pregnancy as the woman he was living with suspected him of cheating, so he lured Kaylin to her death, which was an “execution-style” killing.
The court was shown a text that Faison sent to a friend that read, “On my brother’s grave, I’m gonna crop her out.” It would seem to suggest removing Kaylin from the situation somehow.
Incriminating text
The prosecution said Faison’s messages revealed his intentions. “Phones are an extension of your mind and your body. It’s the reason we can give you clear, convincing evidence,” they said. “He said he was going to do it, then he did it. The police got the right guy.”
The jury found Faison guilty of first-degree murder and recommended the death penalty. The judge agreed. In December 2025, Faison, 23, was sentenced to death.
Kaylin’s mum made a victim impact statement. “No words can capture the depth of pain that comes with losing your daughter to murder,” she said, “every day I wake up and face a world that no longer has her smile, her laughter, her hugs. The grief never leaves – it sits in my chest like a weight that will never go away.”
Kaylin was a devoted mum and had been excited about growing her family. But instead of welcoming another new life into the fold, her loved ones were left with the heart breaking image of her abandoned dead body and the ultrasound picture of her unborn son lying nearby.
