The Vanished Podcast Replay: Margaret "Kay-Alana" Turner Part 2 - The Shattered Window
Kay-Alana Turner’s episodes first aired in November 2023. On March 9, 2023, 27-year-old Kay-Alana Turner left a friend’s home in Silsbee, Texas, and began driving toward Austin, about four hours away, apparently to visit a friend. In the days leading up to March 9, Kay-Alana had not been sleeping well and did not seem quite like herself. In the early morning hours of March 10, witnesses in Hockley and Tomball, Texas, interacted with Kay-Alana after she asked if she could sleep in their driveways. By that time, her phone had died.
Around 6 a.m., a homeowner in the Holly Creek Estates subdivision in Tomball noticed Kay-Alana’s car parked in their driveway, with Kay-Alana asleep inside. The homeowner contacted someone from the homeowner’s association and nearby neighbors. As several people gathered around the vehicle and attempted to wake her, Kay-Alana became frightened. When she tried to leave, her car was blocked. An officer from the Harris County Sheriff’s Office then broke the driver's side window of her vehicle.
Kay-Alana fled first by driving through a yard and across nearby farmland, then into a wooded area where her car became stuck. Deputies pursued her on foot. Kay-Alana ran into the woods, dropping her phone along the way and later removing her shoes, which were filled with glass from the broken window. In the days that followed, her loved ones compared accounts and came to believe that Kay-Alana had been experiencing a mental health crisis that night. Despite extensive searches of the area where she was last seen, no further trace of her was found beyond her phone and shoes.
On April 19, 2024, after more than a year of searching, Kay-Alana Turner’s remains were found by Texas Equusearch in Montgomery County, Texas, less than 1,000 feet from where her car had been abandoned on March 10, 2023. She was positively identified through dental records. Due to the condition of her remains, the medical examiner ruled the cause of death as undetermined, with the manner classified as accidental, noting no evidence of foul play.
In the months that followed, body camera footage from Kay-Alana’s initial encounter with Harris County Sheriff’s Office deputies was released, sparking concern and controversy. In the footage, deputies were heard making joking and disparaging remarks about Kay-Alana, including comments about her appearance after viewing her identification. The footage intensified scrutiny of the response to Kay-Alana on the day she disappeared and raised broader questions about how law enforcement handles encounters involving individuals experiencing medical or mental health crises.
Kay-Alana Turner was laid to rest in November 2024. Her family continues to seek accountability and hopes her story leads to meaningful change, believing that compassion and understanding could have made a critical difference that day.
Photo Credit: James Blaign Rambo
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