Cynthia Anabel Cardenas, 33, a Hispanic woman, was killed outside her home in Bessemer, Alabama, in the early hours of Sunday, August 28, 2022, after a night that had started as an ordinary weekend outing. Just before 6 a.m., police were called to the 3300 block of Avenue C on what was first reported as a possible stabbing. When officers arrived, they found her slumped in the driver’s seat of a car that was still running, parked where she had come to rest at the end of the night.
The Jefferson County Coroner’s Office identified her as the victim, and investigators came to believe the attack was domestic-related.
As detectives worked the scene and chased down the first scraps of information, the early confusion about how she had been hurt gave way to a clearer, more chilling account: investigators said they later learned she had been shot. She was pronounced dead at the scene. Family members told reporters she was five months pregnant, a detail that made the loss feel even heavier and would shape the gravity of what came next.
Investigators focused on her boyfriend, Hector Medina-Grajeda, and obtained a capital murder warrant accusing him in her death. Police said the couple had been at a party in Sylacauga on Saturday night into Sunday morning, and that their night ended with her returning to Bessemer and being found dead in her vehicle not long afterward. In the days that followed, authorities said leads indicated Medina-Grajeda fled Alabama and crossed into Lebanon, Tennessee, where he and his brother, 24-year-old Monseath Elezar Medinia Grajeda, were believed to have stayed at a Days Inn by Wyndham—only to check out before law enforcement could get there.
The search widened beyond city limits, with investigators asking the public for tips and warning that the suspect was still at large. Listings circulated describing Medina-Grajeda as wanted for capital murder in connection with the killing of his pregnant girlfriend, repeating the same stark image of the last moments: the victim shot while seated behind the wheel of her car, found where the night left her.
Public bulletins and case postings continued to describe the case as open and the suspect as wanted, rather than arrested, with at least one widely shared case listing still showing an “open” status and a last update date of August 20, 2025. In other words, despite the warrant and the trail into Tennessee, the public record available through these postings does not show a concluded manhunt, a court case, or a conviction tied to her death—only an ongoing call for information about where the suspect went after he disappeared from that hotel corridor and into the wider world.
