Springfield, Missouri Softball Player Prepares to Testify in Five Murder Trials While Raising Her Child and Running a Business
One Year After Losing Chaviz to a Drive-By Shooting, This Missouri Mom Is Back on the Field and Ready for Court
November 24, 2026
This article was last updated by Alisha Shrestha on November 24, 2026
In the quiet courtroom of Greene County, Missouri, on a warm May afternoon in 2026, a young woman sat calmly with her sleeping infant in a carrier beside her.
To anyone glancing over, she might have looked like any other new mom taking a moment of rest. But Haley Frillman is far from ordinary.
At just 20 years old, the former high school softball standout is preparing to testify in five separate murder trials, including the heartbreaking case that took the life of her boyfriend and the father of her child, 26-year-old Chaviz Nguyen.
, Haley and Chaviz were driving through Springfield after dropping off his older son with his grandparents.
They were headed to dinner, talking about their future and the baby Haley was carrying.
What should have been a normal evening turned into a nightmare when a dark sedan full of teenage boys pulled alongside their car on Grant Avenue near College Street.
Without warning, shots rang out. Chaviz was killed instantly. Haley, hit multiple times in the leg and finger, somehow managed to drive to a busy intersection and scream for help.
She survived. Their daughter did too, though the baby was later born with tremors doctors believe may have been trauma-related.
Today, those shakes are gone, and the little girl is healthy, often seen napping peacefully through court hearings, just as she did during the preliminary hearing for one of the accused shooters, 17-year-old Cesar Bolanos.
Bolanos, along with Timothy Hester (17) and Elysha Bedell (19), face first-degree murder charges in Chaviz’s death.
Prosecutors say the shooting stemmed from a case of mistaken identity; Chaviz’s father, Chea Nguyen, said that the attackers likely thought they were targeting someone else involved in an earlier dispute.
At Bolanos’s preliminary hearing in May, Judge Jody Stockard heard testimony from five witnesses, including Haley, and ruled there was enough probable cause to send the case to trial.
One key witness, a woman who had been dating Hester, testified that Bolanos was at her apartment holding an AR-style pistol just hours before the shooting.
She said the teens took her car that night, and when they returned, the back windshield was shot out.
The next day, when police arrived, she saw Bolanos frantically trying to disassemble a gun and flush bullets down the toilet.
Surveillance footage from a local business helped police track the suspects’ car, leading officers straight to the apartment where all three were found the following morning.
While the legal process moves forward slowly and painfully, Haley’s life has not stopped, far from it.
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She’s back on the softball field, training and playing the sport she loves.
She’s launched her own small business. She’s raising her daughter alone. And somehow, in her very first semester of college, she earned near-perfect grades: 100% in Introduction to Christianity and Business Communications, 99.8% in Accounting, 98.55% in Microeconomics, and 92.57% in Old Testament, all As.
Her brother-in-law, Damian Frillman, summed it up best in a proud and emotional Facebook post that has since touched thousands:
“Haley is a mom doing an incredible job by herself. She somehow manages softball practice and working out. She is running a business. She’s mourning. And she’s prepared to head into court as a surviving victim and witness for five separate murder trials… just one week from now.
And these are her grades as her first semester of college ends.
Chaviz would be so proud of her.”
He would be. And so is an entire community watching a young Missouri softball player refuse to let tragedy define her.
Haley Frillman is not just surviving; she’s showing the world what strength really looks like, one day, one swing, one perfect grade, and one court appearance at a time.
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