June 7, 2026
‘Justice for my baby’: Mid-South mother finds closure after conviction in son’s murder
RIPLEY, Tenn. – A Mid-South mother finally has justice after her son’s murder.
It’s been four years since Brandi Driver-Jones last saw her son.
On Wednesday a judge sentenced the man who killed him to life in a prison cell.
“Thank god. Just thank god, I finally got justice for my baby,” Drive-Jones said.
In June 2022, police said Kylan Beard, who was also 18 at the time, fired a rifle into a playhouse behind Driver-Jones’s home on Spivey Street.
He killed Donell Barbee and injured two children.
At first, investigators treated Beard as a victim because he was found lying just feet away with a gunshot wound himself.
“Same thing I told them in court. He didn’t only hurt me and my family, he hurt his own family. Because outside of my son not on earth anymore, or not here present with us, he’s still alive,” Driver-Jones said. “But he’s just locked up. He’s still get talk to his family. He still can. They can still come visit him. I can’t get none of that. I have to go to a gravesite or come back here and pray I feel his presence.”
Beard was treated at a Memphis hospital and released.
A day later, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation put Beard on its most wanted list.
U.S. Marshals arrested him in Memphis days later.
On Wednesday he was sentenced to life in prison.
Justice for Driver-Jones, but never enough to make up for the loss of her son, whose life was cut short less than two months after his high school graduation.
“Three years and ten months. Like, I’ve been waiting and everything since all of it happened,” Driver-Jones said.
In addition to the murder count, a jury also convicted Beard of counts of attempted murder and other charges.
In all, his sentence is life plus 26 years.