Brittany Irwin

On the cusp of a new beginning, Brittany Irwin was building a hopeful future for herself and her two young children in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The 26-year-old Black woman had recently secured a new job and was on the verge of completing a significant educational goal at Fayetteville Technical Community College. Just the night before her death, she finished the last of the 300 hours required to earn her state license as a nail technician, a career she was excited to begin. Her brother, T'Shan Torrey, remembered her as being focused and determined. "She was getting her life together, doing what she got to do," he said. "She got a job, she was going back to school and doing what was right for her kids."

The promise of that future was violently extinguished in the early hours of Wednesday, March 25, 2020. At approximately 12:30 a.m., officers from the Fayetteville Police Department were called to a shooting at Brittany's home in the 4100 block of Dellwood Drive. Inside, they found she had been shot multiple times. Most of her family, including her 7-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter, were asleep in the house at the time of the shooting. According to her family, the attack was brutally personal and carried out in a place that should have been a sanctuary.

In the immediate aftermath, a heartbreaking scene unfolded. Brittany's older child, her son, found his mother on the floor and pleaded, "Mommy, get up," before running to protect his baby sister. T'Shan Torrey arrived at the home to find a devastating sight. "When I got there and just seeing my sister on the floor, and I tried, I tried to help her up," he recalled, describing a feeling of weakness washing over him. The family identified the gunman as Brittany's ex-boyfriend, Marshall Hollingsworth, the father of her young daughter.

Torrey told reporters that Hollingsworth had come to the house and shot Brittany "execution-style" before fleeing on foot. The couple had broken up months before, and according to her brother, Hollingsworth had threatened Brittany multiple times in the week leading up to the murder. The Fayetteville Police Department publicly named Marshall Hollingsworth as the suspect in Brittany's homicide and warned that he should be considered armed and dangerous, asking the public to call 911 if they saw him.

The community and her college mourned the loss of a young mother with so much potential. Dr. J. Larry Keen, the president of Fayetteville Technical Community College, issued a statement expressing deep sympathies for her family. "This is terrible news," he said. "Even as Brittany is mourned, we hope that she will also be celebrated for her life, her accomplishments and her commitment to achieving this educational goal, which would have launched her into a new career."

The investigation into Brittany Irwin's death was launched by the Fayetteville Police Department, with detectives asking anyone with information to come forward. In the days following the shooting, her family grappled with the trauma and the immense loss, particularly for Brittany’s two children, who were left without their mother. As of the latest available reports from March 2020, the case remains a painful and unresolved chapter for her loved ones. Justice for Brittany Irwin hinges on the whereabouts of Marshall Hollingsworth, who was sought by law enforcement for her murder. Anyone with information regarding the case was asked to contact Detective Johnson at (910) 224-3257 or Crimestoppers at (910) 483-TIPS.