When two men from the northwest set out for a cross country trip to the Gulf Coast in late August, they had no idea that they would never be coming back.
“They saw it as a way to make money and help people,” said Michelle Brandenburg, the mother of Ryan Frazier, one of the men. “It was an adventure.”
And when the bodies of Frazier and Joshua Carroll were both found shot to death on a Baldwin County road in the early morning hours of Oct. 9, none of those tasked with discovering their identities knew where to start.
It was a seven-week journey, the details of which can be pieced together from family members, press statements from law enforcement, and the memories of people who encountered them.
Frazier and Carroll were two lineman working in cable fiber optics who had been in and around several locations throughout the Southeast over the past few months. They left Washington State back in late August after Hurricane Laura slammed into Louisiana, killing 77 people and inflicting $14 billion in damage.
Carroll and Frazier had known each other for several years, according to Kristin Lichtefeld, Frazier’s half-sister. They lived around Shelton, Washington, in the Seattle area. Carroll had been in construction but switched to line work and was a senior journeyman lineman. Frazier had only recently taken up the same profession after time in interiors and saw the trip to the Gulf as a way to learn. Neither men had ever been to the South before.
They left with Frazier driving his Cadillac and both men carrying their dogs - Carroll with Baloo, a black Labrador, and Frazier with Buddy, a pit mix.
The 2020 hurricane season has been one of the most active on the Atlantic coast, and Laura was the strongest hurricane to hit Louisiana.
Ryan Frazier was remembered as someone who liked to rescue animals.
Brandenburg said Frazier would send back videos of the destruction. He had never seen anything like it, she said.
“He was heartbroken,” Brandenburg said. “He said it’s like a third world country, the towns that he was in, what they had endured. He was pretty shocked.”
Carroll was 42 years old. Frazier had just turned 30 in August. The steady line of tropical storms hitting the coast meant that the two hopscotched between jobs in Texas, Louisiana and Florida, said Penny Vincent, Josh’s aunt. They spent long, demanding hours with each other on the road, and on the job, in sometimes tedious backbreaking work. Pay was occasionally slow in coming.
Carroll would sometimes talk to Vincent about the loneliness of the work. His grandfather, who he was very close to, had only recently died.
Joshua Carroll was a journeyman lineman who was working in the Southeast when he was shot to death Oct. 9, 2020.
“Josh was very good at what he did,” Vincent said of Carroll. “He was a kindred soul. Super sweet. He came from a nice Christian family. He had a really sweet spirit about him.”
On Sept. 23, Carroll posted on Facebook from Pensacola that he had a “great feeling” about the crews he was working with, that they were “exactly what I wanted (to) find.”
Frazier, his half-sister said, was charismatic and fun, but with a quiet side. He was earning money in part to support his eight-year-old son. He had a habit of picking up rescue animals, according to his mother. “Nearly every member of the family has a dog he rescued and gave to them,” Brandenburg said.
“He wasn’t a very big guy, and very kind,” Lichtefeld said. “Just a goofball. He was not violent or confrontational.”
There was a sense around both men, their families said, that they had begun to “turn their lives around” after a set of struggles.
The two made an impression on Denise House, who works at a Bay Minette store. She saw the two come into the store in the mornings and occasionally in the evening. They stood out because of their accents, she said.
“It was right after the hurricane (Sally in September),” she said. “We appreciate everybody who came down, but I remember people’s faces. They were real sweet. It broke my heart what happened to them.”
The two eventually went back to Louisiana to resume work, but the approach of Hurricane Delta made them retreat again to Pensacola, where they could get some work until the storm passed. On Oct. 8, Carroll called his father from there.
“Who knew it would be their last phone call?” Vincent said.
A paper carrier discovered the bodies of Carroll and Frazier in the middle of Baldwin County Road 95 in Elberta about 5 a.m. on Oct. 9. They had been shot to death, four times in the back, including in the back of the head. Both of their dogs stood guard over their bodies. Investigators spent most of the day trying to learn who they were.
The clue was a chip in Buddy, Frazier’s dog, from a previous owner. This led investigators to piece together who the dog belonged to, and pinpoint who the men were. Once they gained that, they realized that Frazier’s vehicle was missing. It was discovered the next day driven in Mobile by Antwon Montrex Smith, authorities say, who shot them and left in Frazier’s automobile.
According to police, there was a significant amount of blood in the vehicle, along with a gun, ammunition, drugs and Frazier’s wallet. Smith is a person of interest in the March 2017 disappearance of his girlfriend, Calandra Marie Stallworth. When the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office later arrested Smith on drug and weapons charges that year, he was driving Stallworth’s vehicle.
At a news conference announcing Smith’s arrest, authorities said the two linemen met with him to conduct a drug transaction, but Smith “did not follow up on his part of the bargain." Smith, 37, faces capital murder charges. Both Carroll and Frazier’s dogs were taken in by family members.
Since Frazier’s death, Brandenburg said, she sees his life as a “slideshow in my head."
“I felt he was getting to be in a good place,” she said. "Was he perfect? No, but every time I talked to him, he was really, really excited about life.
“To be snuffed out like that...I have no words," she said.
A GoFund Me for Carroll’s family can be found here, while one for Frazier’s son can be found here.