Sierra Tikeshia Ashley Polson, a 29-year-old Black woman, was killed on March 9, 2023, inside the Orange County home where she lived with members of her family near Orlando. Shortly after 10:15 p.m., Orange County sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to a residence in the 2500 block of Greenleaf Drive after a shooting was reported. They found Polson suffering from a gunshot wound and rushed her to a hospital, where she died from her injuries.
Investigators quickly determined that the shooting appeared to be connected to domestic violence and focused on Polson’s boyfriend, Keyvon Daley, with whom she had reportedly been in a relationship for roughly six months.
According to accounts drawn from the arrest affidavit, Polson and Daley had spent much of that Thursday together, and family members did not notice an obvious argument between them earlier in the day. Sometime after 9 p.m., the couple left the house together for about 20 minutes. After returning around 10 p.m., they went into the bedroom they shared. Only a few minutes later, Polson’s mother heard a loud bang coming from the room. When she went to investigate, authorities said Daley attempted to prevent her from entering. She forced her way inside and discovered her daughter unresponsive on the floor with a gunshot wound. Investigators also reported that responding fire personnel initially found a black cable wrapped around Polson’s neck.
Polson’s mother confronted Daley immediately. According to the affidavit, she grabbed him and struck him while accusing him of shooting her daughter. She then noticed what appeared to be a small black handgun protruding from his clothing. Daley pushed past her and fled the house. Investigators said he had been the only other person in the bedroom with Polson at the time the gunshot was heard. While deputies were still investigating at the residence, Daley called Polson’s family and asked whether she was all right. When he was told that she had died, he ended the call. Authorities obtained an arrest affidavit, located Daley within hours and took him into custody on March 10. He was charged with first-degree murder, and contemporary reporting stated that he was being held in the Orange County Jail without bond.
The homicide came after two earlier domestic-violence arrests involving Daley, one in November 2022 and another in January 2023. A publicly available booking record from January 4 lists Daley as having been arrested for domestic battery by strangulation, with a $1,500 bond recorded at that time. Polson’s mother, Carlotta Brown, later said that she had warned her daughter about the escalating pattern in the relationship. Brown also said Polson had told her that she intended to leave Daley the day after the night she was killed. The two earlier domestic-violence cases did not result in prosecutions going forward. The State Attorney’s Office said prosecutors had attempted to pursue the matters but that Polson did not want to participate in prosecuting Daley and that the available evidence was insufficient to proceed without her cooperation.
In the aftermath, Brown described Polson as a free-spirited, fun-loving person who was known for smiling and caring about others. She was raising three children and working two jobs. For her family, the earlier encounters with the criminal justice system became an especially painful part of the story: Daley had already come to law enforcement’s attention in connection with alleged violence in the relationship, yet those cases had ended before the fatal encounter. The State Attorney’s Office subsequently said it intended to prosecute Daley for Polson’s killing and hold him accountable. The online sources located for this synopsis establish Daley’s arrest and first-degree murder charge but do not provide a reliable, independently verified later trial verdict or conviction, so no subsequent conviction or sentence can be stated from those sources.
