Heartbreaking Revelation: The last known photo of a mother of five reveals her final moments before a savage kn!fe att@ck allegedly linked to two sisters
Brandi Byrd Reynolds was killed while delivering mail in rural North Carolina last week
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(749x360:751x362):format(webp)/Brandi-Byrd-Brent-ReynoldsWilliam-Craig-Durham63026-d040f46b188a42acacd716da45a3389a.jpg)
A U.S. Postal Service worker who was fatally shot while delivering mail in rural North Carolina had been widowed just six months earlier.
Brandi Byrd Reynolds was killed while on her mail route on Friday, June 26, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation said. The U.S. Postal Service confirmed to PEOPLE that Reynolds was one of its employees.
William Craig Durham was arrested in connection with her killing, NCSBI said in its statement.
Reynolds was found deceased by Wilkes County officers responding to a request for assistance at a Hays, N.C. location around 4 p.m. on Friday, according to the bureau.
Durham is accused of restraining Reynolds and “removing the victim from one place to another without the consent of the victim,” according to a warrant obtained by the Charlotte Observer.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(599x0:601x2):format(webp)/Brandi-Byrd-Brent-Reynoldsfamily-63026-228e20cfb43443d395c7a48f337fa3f1.jpg)
Brandi Byrd Reynolds and Brent Reynolds with their daughters.
Reynolds’ killing leaves the family in devastating circumstances, as her husband Brent Reynolds was killed in a crash just months earlier, according to local news reports and his obituary.
Brent, 35, was killed in a single-vehicle crash on Dec. 23, local outlets FOX 8, WXII 12 and the Wilkes Journal-Patriot reported at the time.
On social media, the couple would share loving stories and notes about their family.
“I am so lucky I love this girl so much …… she was literally my dream girl and somehow she got stuck with me,” Brent wrote in a post last July about Brandi.
“The reason I get up every morning,” Brandi wrote in a February post with her two daughters. “Love these babies. They are what makes life worth living.”
Durham has been charged with first-degree murder and first-degree kidnapping, and a judge denied him bond on Monday, according to online court records reviewed by PEOPLE.
Plea information was not available in the records and PEOPLE was unable to get in touch with his attorney despite repeated attempts.
