Murder of Aniah Blanchard

Aniah Haley Blanchard was a 19-year-old college student from Homewood, Alabama. She was the daughter of a Birmingham businessman and a registered nurse who is married to a former UFC heavyweight fighter. Blanchard graduated from Homewood High School, where she played softball, and was studying early childhood education at Southern Union State Community College, planning to transfer to Auburn University.

Blanchard was last seen by a family member on the evening of October 23, 2019, and was recorded on surveillance video at a Chevron gas station in Auburn, Alabama, later that night. In late-night Snapchat messages, she told her roommate she was close to home, then said she was with a man she had just met, named Eric; her phone activity stopped at 11:47 p.m. An Auburn police detective later testified the phone went dead or was powered off near the Clarion Inn on South College Street. Her roommate and parents described the final messages as uncharacteristic, and it was not established whether Blanchard wrote the last one herself. She was reported missing to the Auburn Police Department on October 24, 2019.

A multi-agency task force including the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security searched for Blanchard. On October 25, investigators recovered her damaged 2017 Honda CR-V, abandoned near an apartment complex in Montgomery, Alabama; the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences confirmed blood in the front passenger seat was Blanchard's, and investigators found a bullet hole in the passenger door and shell casings in the cup holder. On November 6, police released surveillance images of a person of interest, identified the next day as 29-year-old Ibraheem Yazeed of Montgomery. Video showed Yazeed near Blanchard at the gas station and entering and exiting her car; a witness said Yazeed forced Blanchard into the vehicle, and another witness said Yazeed described shooting a woman who went for a gun. Yazeed was on bond at the time for an unrelated robbery, kidnapping, and attempted-murder case.

Police issued a warrant for Yazeed's arrest on November 7, 2019, and a fugitive task force arrested him near Pensacola, Florida, after he fled on foot; he was extradited to Alabama and held without bond. On November 25, 2019, human remains, including a skull with an apparent bullet hole, were found in a wooded area off County Road 2 in Macon County, Alabama. The remains were identified as Blanchard's two days later, and an autopsy determined she had died of a gunshot wound. Yazeed's charges were then upgraded to capital murder.

A grand jury indicted Yazeed in November 2022 on three counts of capital murder, and he pleaded not guilty in March 2023. Prosecutors sought the death penalty through trial, but on March 19, 2026, Yazeed was convicted of the lesser charges of murder and felony murder rather than capital murder. On May 7, 2026, he was sentenced to two concurrent terms of life imprisonment with the possibility of parole.

Blanchard's disappearance and death attracted national attention, and a reward for information, funded in part by state officials and by UFC supporters, grew to more than $105,000. Because Yazeed had been free on bail when Blanchard was killed, her family supported new legislation, Aniah's Law, expanding the charges for which an Alabama judge may deny bail. The Alabama House and Senate passed the measure in 2020 and 2021, it was signed into law in June 2021, and Alabama voters approved it at the ballot in November 2022.