What Happened to Keyanna Mercer? Her Alleged Killer Escaped Custody, Evaded Arrest for Months

On Sept. 2, 2023, 23-year-old Keyanna Mercer was found dead from a fatal gunshot wound inside a motel room at the Red Carpet Inn in the Sharpstown neighborhood of Houston.

Later, a man named Joshua Zimmerman — also known as Vincent Guerino Juliano and Jamie Quintana — was charged in her murder. But he managed to escape from authorities and remain on the run for more than a year before he was finally detained.

What happened to Keyanna?

According to court docs obtained by Click2Houston, Zimmerman was staying at the hotel for an extended period and had received several noise complaints in the days leading up to Mercer's death. He'd also been seen with a woman who appeared frightened (presumably Mercer), though when motel staff asked her if she needed help, she'd said she was fine. One day she even appeared to have a bloodied mouth.

On Sept. 2, a motel assistant manager responded to another noise complaint after Mercer and Zimmerman could be heard fighting in their room. Zimmerman had reportedly answered the door in a towel and had insisted he and Mercer weren't fighting, just talking loudly. Later, someone else filed another noise complaint and mentioned that they saw a woman jumping out of the window of the room.

When motel management returned to investigate, nobody was there, so they disabled the room keys and locked up the room. Zimmerman later appeared at the motel office asking to retrieve his things from the room. They reportedly let him in with temporary access.

The motel manager reportedly waited until around 8 p.m. for a security guard before she went to check that the room had been vacated. But when they got to the room, they noticed the door wasn't fully shut. They knocked, then opened the door to find Mercer on the floor, dead from a gunshot wound to the head.

According to surveillance footage, Zimmerman and Mercer had returned to their room at around 5 p.m. after having been gone for hours. At 5:33 p.m., cameras picked up the sound of a scream and a gunshot. A minute later, Zimmerman was seen leaving the room by himself. At 8:26 p.m., Mercer's body was found.

Zimmerman was charged on Sept. 5, 2023, though at the time, his whereabouts were unknown. He was then arrested weeks later on Sept. 29 in DeSoto County, Miss., for separate felony charges. And while police planned to extradite him back to Harris County in Texas, Zimmerman ended up escaping during a court hearing on June 14, 2024.

According to Law & Crime, DeSoto County District Attorney Matthew Barton told reporters at a press conference that surveillance footage of Zimmerman's escape from the courthouse had been mysteriously deleted, though his office was able to retrieve it.

“It did not take long for us to uncover a conspiracy to cover up and suppress certain evidence regarding the escape of Joshua Zimmerman,” he said, adding that he would be investigating "why a known murderer is walking through the same walkways as my staff and all the people that were in public that day."

On social media, commenters began speculating that Zimmernan — who also reportedly has ties to Memphis and Connecticut — must have "had help" in escaping and that this appeared to be an "inside job."

Though Zimmerman had managed to reportedly charm a driver into giving him a ride outside the courthouse where he'd escaped, he was detained months later on Aug. 21, 2024, in Chicago, after barricading himself inside a restaurant. Following an hours-long standoff between Zimmerman and the police, they were able to finally arrest him.