Eric Burchfield, 28, a white man from Hixson, Tennessee, was found dead in the early hours of July 21, 2017, at a gas station on Hixson Pike. Police on patrol noticed his body lying near the station’s sign around 3:25 a.m., before any call came in to report what had happened. He had been shot in the back, and emergency officials pronounced him dead at the scene as the station lights washed over a place that—minutes earlier—had been just another late-night stop.
As investigators began piecing together the final hours, the focus tightened around a woman close to him: Ember Lee Cash Elm, also known as Emily Brooks. Court records described how an eyewitness saw a woman near the vehicle where Burchfield was later found, speaking on the phone and sounding agitated as she ranted about a boyfriend and drugs—then disappearing before the witness came back outside. When officers went to notify Burchfield’s mother, she pointed them toward the same person, telling police the two had argued earlier and insisting, “Ember killed him.” His phone, police said, backed up the sense of a relationship in turmoil, showing text messages that reflected ongoing conflict between them.
The day after the killing, police arrested Elm at her home. According to reporting and later court filings, she briefly slipped her handcuffs and ran, but officers caught her within a short distance. During that attempt to flee, she tried to get at something in a backpack, and officers found a handgun inside. Investigators later linked that handgun to the casing found near Burchfield’s body at the gas station, strengthening the case that the weapon in her possession was the one used in the shooting.
Elm initially faced criminal homicide and an unlawful possession of a weapon charge, and the case continued moving through the courts as prosecutors pursued a more serious count. In December 2017, a Hamilton County grand jury charged her with first-degree premeditated murder, alleging she shot Burchfield in the back of the head at the gas station.
In January 2020, she pleaded guilty to second degree murder under an open plea, meaning the length of her sentence would be decided later within the statutory range. Not long after entering that plea, she sought to take it back, arguing she felt pressured and raising issues tied to a past brain injury and her understanding of what she had agreed to—but the trial court rejected the request. The case then turned into a fight over whether that guilty plea would stand, and ultimately the sentence that would follow.
The court sentenced her to 21 years in prison, and she appealed, continuing to argue she should have been allowed to withdraw her plea. In a decision filed March 3, 2022, Tennessee’s Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the trial court’s rulings, leaving the conviction and 21-year sentence in place—closing, in the eyes of the courts, the criminal case arising from the shooting at the Hixson Pike gas station.
