Casey Lyons, the fiancée of a Florida TV reporter who was fatally shot while covering a story, has given birth to their child three years after his death. Casey, 29, welcomed a baby boy on March 19 after collecting sperm from her deceased partner, Dylan Lyons, and undergoing In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) treatments.
The Tragic Incident
Dylan, a journalist for Spectrum News, was covering the murder of Nathacha Augustin, 38, in Pine Hills on February 22, 2023, when a gunman returned to the scene and fatally shot him. The alleged shooter, Melvin Moses, then 19, also shot Spectrum News photographer Jesse Walden before barging into a nearby home and shooting Brandi Major and her nine-year-old daughter, T'Yonna Major. T'Yonna and Dylan died from their injuries. Walden and Brandi were left in critical condition but survived. Moses was arrested and charged in connection with the killing spree.
A Dream Fulfilled
At the time of his death, Dylan, 24, and Casey, who changed her last name to his in 2023, were engaged. They met while working together at WCJB, an ABC affiliate in Gainesville, in 2020. They always dreamed of getting married and having children, so Casey used posthumous sperm retrieval (PSR) to collect Dylan's sperm and transferred it to an IVF clinic. She found a surrogate within three months but endured five egg retrievals to create viable embryos and two failed transfers before learning the surrogate was pregnant on July 18, 2025.
Casey's Journey
Casey told People: "When I found out the man I was so deeply in love with and was building a life with was murdered, [it] was something I'll never forget." She recalled her final moment with Dylan, adding: "Sometimes I still have PTSD flashbacks to that moment and how I couldn't even stand. An hour prior we were talking on the phone — and suddenly he was gone. It was the worst moment of my life."
Casey said she and Dylan often spoke about having a family, but wanted to wait until her conversion to Judaism was finalized because it was important to him to raise their children Jewish. The new mother explained the "stressful" and "lengthy" process: "To retrieve viable sperm after death it has to be collected within 24-36 hours. We had to wait until Dylan's body was released because of the investigation. That took about 24 hours, then we had to find a urologist who would perform the procedure."
After retrieving the sperm, Casey had to find a way to create a child using her and Dylan's genetics. "There were days I would cry because I wasn't sure if I would ever become a mom," she recalled.
New Beginnings
Three years after the hardest day of her life, Casey is the mother of her and Dylan's one-month-old son. She now lives with Dylan's parents, Beth and Gary Lyons, whom she calls her "biggest support." "They always helped me the best they could in my dark days even though they were grieving the loss of a child," she said. Casey mentioned a promise Dylan's father made: "Dylan's dad made a promise to Dylan that I was totally unaware of, that he would always take care of me if anything ever happened in life. We definitely leaned on each other in our grief."
Through support from loved ones and a grief counselor, Casey decided not to give up. "I decided to live because Dylan can't anymore, so I want to live for him," she said. She plans to tell their son about his father one day but is focused on their future. "This is what we always wanted together. However, Dylan is very much alive in my heart and now in our son's heart as well. He will always be with us."
