Tyler, she recalled, laughed and did not escalate the confrontation. Eventually they got Brittany into the front passenger seat. Marissa walked around the vehicle, hugged Tyler, and apologized again because she did not want him thinking she had taken Brittany out and gotten her extremely drunk.
Tyler told her it was fine. He explained that Brittany had already been drinking before they met and reassured Marissa that she was not responsible. To Marissa, he seemed kind and accustomed to dealing with Brittany when she reached that level of intoxication.
The friend interview went into far more detail than a simple description of drunkenness. Marissa said Brittany's mood at Hogfish moved rapidly between anger about her former boyfriend and affection for Tyler. She cried about how Tyler had saved her and how much she loved him, then continued drinking even though Marissa was increasingly uncomfortable with how intoxicated she had become.
Marissa and her boyfriend tried to manage the situation without provoking Brittany. They discussed an Uber and made sure Tyler knew where to pick them up. When Brittany kept dropping her purse and behaving erratically, Marissa became even more determined that she not drive.
At the docks, Brittany was still emotional and physically unsteady. Marissa remembered Brittany leaning all over her and behaving in ways that drew amused attention from bartenders, but beneath the awkward humor Marissa was concerned. She wanted Tyler there because she trusted him to get Brittany home safely.
After Tyler arrived and Brittany jumped onto his back, the mood changed sharply. Tyler's complaint was not aggressive; he reminded her that she had done that before and nearly caused him to fall. Marissa said Brittany responded by insulting him and punching his arm while demanding to know why he could not simply carry her.
Marissa tried to turn the moment into a joke because she did not want a confrontation. Tyler laughed along rather than retaliating. Once Brittany was seated in the car, Marissa apologized directly to Tyler for the condition she was in, and Tyler reassured her that Brittany had already been drinking before the two women met.
For investigators, that story did not prove what happened in the bedroom on June 17 by itself. What it did was provide context that conflicted with the image Brittany had presented during her self-defense account. Detectives continued gathering similar statements from people who had seen how the couple behaved when alcohol was involved.
Other friends and acquaintances, according to the investigation described in the source, gave similar accounts. Detectives came to believe that alcohol repeatedly changed Brittany’s behavior and that Tyler was often the person who absorbed her anger. The source characterizes those episodes as becoming more severe over time.
This evidence would later become central at trial. Prosecutors used witnesses such as Marissa to challenge the defense portrayal of Tyler as the primary aggressor. The accounts they presented described a relationship in which Tyler was often patient while Brittany became volatile after drinking.
The case finally went to trial in late February 2025 on a charge of second-degree murder with a firearm in Tyler Nulish’s death. Brittany’s defense attorneys argued, among other things, that her conduct had to be understood in the context of trauma she had experienced earlier in life.
The prosecution focused on the changing versions of the shooting, Jordan’s account of Tyler’s final statements, the physical evidence, and the testimony of people who knew the couple. The trial lasted roughly a week.
By the time the case reached court, the prosecution was no longer asking jurors to rely solely on the frantic statements made in the first minutes after the shooting. They could compare Jordan's early account with Brittany's initial denials of knowledge, her later self-defense narrative, the condition of both people at the scene, and testimony about prior alcohol-fueled behavior. The defense, in turn, had the opportunity to challenge those interpretations and argue that Brittany's history and state of mind affected what happened.
The source describes the jury's decision as swift after the week-long presentation of evidence. Whatever uncertainty surrounded the first 911 call, jurors concluded that the state had proved second-degree murder with a firearm beyond a reasonable doubt. The sentence that followed ensured that the consequences would extend for decades.
The jury deliberated for less than an hour before finding Brittany guilty. She was sentenced to forty years in prison. The source states that because a firearm was used in the offense, she would not be eligible to receive time off the first twenty-five years of the sentence.
Brittany Hullbrook was sent to the Homestead Correctional Institution. The life she had been living in the Florida Keys ended in a prison sentence, while Tyler’s family and friends were left with the loss of a young man whose final night began as an ordinary evening with the people closest to him.
One exchange from the investigation captured how quickly Brittany’s position had changed from saying she knew nothing about Tyler’s injury to realizing that investigators viewed her as responsible.
“What happens regardless?” she asked. “Do I go and sit in jail?”
The detective told her they still had to complete the investigation and determine who had caused Tyler’s death.
“I’m going to be one hundred percent honest with you,” he said. “At this point, it looks like you did.”
Brittany appeared to understand where the investigation was heading. She asked whether that meant sitting in jail while awaiting a murder trial. The detective told her that if she could explain exactly what happened leading up to the shooting, investigators could at least evaluate the full circumstances.
By then, however, the case no longer rested on a single statement. Jordan’s account, the weapon, the scene, Brittany’s changing story, the lack of physical signs detectives expected from the struggle she described, and later witness interviews had all become pieces of the same investigation. The jury would ultimately decide that those pieces proved the case beyond a reasonable doubt.