The victim, 23-year-old Oluwalayomi Fadero, died after police said a fleeing suspect drove into oncoming traffic and hit her car.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Metro Nashville Police on Saturday identified the woman killed in a violent wrong-way crash on Murfreesboro Pike as 23-year-old Oluwalayomi Fadero, a Nashville resident whose car was hit as a police pursuit raced toward the county line.
The identification shifted public attention from the chase itself to the person who died in it. Investigators said Fadero was trying to turn off Murfreesboro Pike onto Hickory Woods Drive on Friday afternoon when a stolen Ford F-250 driven by fleeing suspect Ray Eugene Padgett struck her Hyundai Elantra on the driver’s side. The collision killed her at the scene and left a neighborhood cut off for hours while police worked the crash site and traced the events that led there.
Police said those events began far from the final collision point. According to investigators, Padgett, 52, stole the pickup from a North Nashville car lot around 9:30 a.m. Friday. Officers said the truck’s owner later tracked it to an alley off St. Louis Street, drove there in another vehicle and tried to block it in. Padgett then backed into the owner’s car and fled, police said. A helicopter was sent up to keep watch on the truck as officers tried to avoid an immediate ground chase. Metro police spokesman Don Aaron said the plan was to monitor the vehicle until officers could move in safely, but that plan fell apart after police said Padgett rammed an unmarked police vehicle later in the day.
That second collision happened near a connector road between Murfreesboro Pike and Old Murfreesboro Pike, according to police. Investigators said a plainclothes detective was inside the unmarked SUV when Padgett accelerated into it. The detective was not seriously injured. After that, police said, officers pursued the pickup south on Murfreesboro Pike for about five minutes at speeds reaching roughly 80 mph. The chase ended near Hickory Woods Drive at about 2:30 p.m., when Padgett crossed into oncoming traffic and hit Fadero’s sedan. Police said the impact pushed her car about 100 yards into a ditch. In follow-up reporting Saturday, investigators said her Elantra was “violently struck” as she tried to turn into her subdivision. That detail underscored how ordinary her final moments appeared to be before the crash tore through the intersection.
The road closure that followed turned the scene into a long, uneasy wait for the people who live nearby. Murfreesboro Pike remained shut down for hours Friday afternoon and evening as officers documented the wreckage, measured skid marks and controlled traffic near the Davidson-Rutherford county line. Neighbors told local reporters they were unable to get home and watched as police mapped out possible ways around the closure, only to conclude the area was too dangerous to reopen. For residents, the crash was not only a breaking-news event but a physical barrier that cut off access to homes and turned a familiar stretch of road into an active homicide investigation. The same corridor that carries commuters and neighborhood traffic each day became the site of one of the city’s most serious police-related crash scenes of the weekend.
By Saturday, police had also laid out the criminal case against Padgett. Authorities said he was on parole when the day began and has at least 20 convictions in five Tennessee counties. He was first taken to Vanderbilt University Medical Center with non-life-threatening injuries, then discharged Saturday and booked into custody. Police said he faces criminally negligent homicide, vehicular homicide by recklessness, felony reckless endangerment, attempted criminal homicide and driving on a revoked license. The attempted criminal homicide charge is tied to the crash involving the unmarked police SUV, investigators said. Local reports said his bond was set at $805,000. Police have also said more charges could follow as detectives complete their investigation into the truck theft, the earlier ramming of the car lot owner’s vehicle and the fatal collision that killed Fadero.
Even with those charges filed, several questions remain unresolved. Police have not publicly released detailed information about the exact status of Padgett’s parole supervision beyond saying he was on parole Friday morning. They also have not said whether any outside review will examine pursuit decisions or whether video from the helicopter, police vehicles or nearby cameras will become public. What officers have emphasized is the sequence they say led directly to Fadero’s death: a stolen truck, escalating danger, a pursuit launched after a detective’s vehicle was hit, and a final wrong-way crash into a driver who had no connection to the suspect or the chase. In practical terms, the case now sits at the meeting point of a homicide prosecution, a crash reconstruction and a broader public reckoning over repeat offenders and high-risk police encounters on city roads.
For now, the name at the center of the victim side of the story is no longer missing from the public record. Fadero, 23, was identified a day after the crash, giving shape to a loss that police first described only as the death of a woman in her 20s. That update changed the tone of the coverage. What began as a pursuit story became, more clearly, a story about a Nashville woman killed while trying to get home. The crash also drew attention to the physical violence of the impact, the distance her car was shoved off the roadway and the random nature of the danger she faced. In the hours after the road reopened, the scene remained a stark reminder that the deadliest part of the episode happened not during the theft or the earlier rammings, but at the moment an uninvolved driver entered the suspect’s path.
As of Sunday, Padgett remained jailed and the investigation was still active. The next developments are expected to come through court proceedings, any added charges and further police updates on the evidence gathered from the crash scene.
Author note: Last updated March 22, 2026.