Cherrish Nunley, a 24-year-old woman and mother of two from Jacksonville, Florida, was on the cusp of her twenty-fifth birthday when her life ended in a parking lot off Sunbeam Road on the evening of November 15, 2025. She had already endured deep loss — their mother died in 2022 — leaving Cherrish and her sister Justine to lean on each other as the last of their immediate family. On that Saturday, officers with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office were called just after 5 p.m.
to the 3800 block of Sunbeam Road in the Mandarin area, where they found her unresponsive behind a business in a lot shared by several shops, including the Chuze Fitness gym. Paramedics pronounced her dead at the scene, and the medical examiner would later rule the case a homicide linked to gun violence.
In the hours and days that followed, the stark physical details of the scene only sharpened the mystery around what had happened. Family members told reporters that she lived in an apartment complex across from the gym but did not have a membership there, and they struggled to understand why she had been at that particular parking lot that night. Detectives offered few specifics at first, confirming only that they were investigating a homicide and stressing there was no broader threat to the community. Her sister told local media that she believed Cherrish had been shot multiple times, a fear echoed in early news coverage and on a GoFundMe page created to help cover funeral expenses and support the children she left behind.
Behind the crime scene tape was a life her loved ones describe as bright and fiercely loving. Justine wrote that her sister was “bright” and “beautiful,” someone who had never been in trouble and who poured herself into being a mother, an aunt, and a daughter. Family and friends remembered her as bubbly, welcoming, and loyal, with a “gentle soul” who was especially good with children and animals. She left behind a five-year-old daughter, Emma, and a one-year-old son, Preston, who were the center of her world; in interviews, her sister spoke through grief about how they had planned to spend that Sunday together, cooking dinner and sharing time with Justine’s newborn, plans shattered by the news that came from detectives instead. Online memorials and candles lit in her name built a portrait of someone who filled rooms with energy and warmth, and whose absence would echo through the small family that remained.
As the family mourned, they also began to talk publicly about the relationship that had increasingly worried them before the shooting. Loved ones confirmed that Cherrish had been in a relationship with a man named Randy Campbell starting around 2023, and that the two shared their one-year-old son, Preston. Over time, according to her sister, the relationship had darkened; she said that domestic abuse had begun, that Cherrish had become less able to talk freely with her family, and that there was a growing sense of unease about Campbell’s influence and control. Even before any arrest was announced, Justine described a gut feeling that he might somehow be connected to what had happened in that parking lot, a fear she voiced after detectives informed the family of the homicide.
The killing did not unfold in isolation. Within a span of three days, three women were found dead in separate incidents across Jacksonville, including another woman under a Blanding Boulevard bridge and a third inside a home, fueling online rumors about a possible serial killer. The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office took the unusual step of publicly addressing those rumors, calling them false and insisting that the cases were unrelated while promising to follow the evidence in each homicide. In Nunley’s case, investigators said the probe remained active and again stressed that they did not believe there was a generalized danger to the public, reinforcing the sense that this was a targeted act rather than a random attack.
Days later, the investigation took a decisive turn hundreds of miles away. On Thursday, November 20, 2025, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office announced that 31-year-old Randy Campbell had been arrested in Dallas, Texas, by U.S. Marshals and Dallas Police in connection with the shooting outside the Jacksonville gym. Detectives said they had identified him early on as the suspected gunman, obtained a warrant in coordination with the State Attorney’s Office, and worked with a federal task force to track him down. Authorities emphasized that Campbell was not a suspect in the other recent Jacksonville homicides that had sparked serial-killer rumors, and reported that he would be extradited back to Duval County to face charges in Nunley’s killing.
For the family, the arrest brought a measure of validation to their fears but not the relief they had hoped for. In interviews, Justine spoke about the heavy future she believed Campbell would carry — that every time he saw their son, he would be forced to confront the life he had destroyed — while also expressing a wish that he receive the harshest possible punishment under the law. As the legal process moves forward, they are organizing a memorial car show to honor Cherrish’s memory and continuing to raise funds through the GoFundMe campaign that first introduced her story to the wider community. On that page, her sister vowed that she would not become “another statistic,” a promise that now shapes the family’s push for justice as they face their first holidays without her, and as two young children grow up with stories instead of memories of the mother who loved them.
