The Hoover investigation changed course after officers examining the scene said evidence showed a confrontation had occurred shortly before the victim died.
HOOVER, Ala. — The police response began as a 911 call about an unresponsive person in a residential swimming pool. Within hours, detectives said evidence at the scene pointed to a physical struggle, and a 30-year-old woman who knew the victim was facing a murder charge.
That progression is central to the Sept. 3 death of Terry Lynn Walker-Zuniga, 70, because the first information available to responders did not itself explain why she was in the water or what had happened beforehand. Hoover police said officers were sent at 9:32 p.m. to the 2200 block of Little Valley Road. Emergency personnel attempted life-saving measures, but Walker-Zuniga died. The subsequent work of detectives — rather than the initial appearance of the scene alone — led police to classify the investigation as a homicide and seek a warrant for Anastasia Tsefia Sudarsana.
Investigators did not wait for a complete public medical ruling before treating the circumstances as suspicious. According to Hoover police, detectives found evidence that a physical struggle had occurred just before Walker-Zuniga’s death. That statement marked the decisive change in the case. Police did not publicly describe the evidence in detail, identify who started the confrontation or explain how long it lasted. But the department said the evidence was sufficient to treat what happened as a homicide rather than simply an unexplained death in a pool.
The scene investigation also produced an immediate lead. Detectives located a person of interest near the area and identified her as Sudarsana, a 30-year-old Hoover woman. Investigators said Sudarsana was an acquaintance of Walker-Zuniga. The description is limited but consequential: it indicates that police did not regard the women as strangers while stopping short of defining their relationship more closely. No authoritative public report reviewed for this story establishes whether they were neighbors, friends, coworkers or connected in some other way.
That same night and into the following day, investigators assembled the information they had gathered and took it to the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office in Birmingham. A murder warrant was issued for Sudarsana, according to police. The department announced the arrest Sept. 4 and said she was being held without bond before transfer to the Jefferson County Jail. Later local reporting also listed her as jailed without bond. Nothing in the public statements amounts to a conviction, and Sudarsana is accused of the killing rather than legally established to have committed it.
Several days later, the investigation gained another official piece of information when the Jefferson County Coroner’s Office identified the woman who died as Walker-Zuniga, a Hoover resident. The coroner said she was pronounced dead at 10:06 p.m. Sept. 3 and had sustained injuries during a reported assault. That confirmation reinforced the police account that the pool death was connected to a confrontation. It did not, however, resolve the medical question at the center of the case because the office did not release a final cause and manner of death.
The gap between those two official conclusions is important. Police said evidence showed a physical struggle and prosecutors authorized a murder warrant. The coroner confirmed injuries associated with a reported assault. Yet authorities have not publicly provided the final medical finding explaining exactly what caused Walker-Zuniga’s death. The fact that she was found in the pool does not, by itself, answer that question. Until the coroner releases the completed findings, accounts that describe a specific mechanism of death more precisely than authorities have done risk going beyond the established record.
The same caution applies to motive. Police have not publicly said what the women were doing immediately before the confrontation or what may have triggered it. Authorities have not announced a dispute, financial issue, personal grievance or other reason for the reported struggle. They also have not publicly identified the 911 caller or said whether that person witnessed any part of the event. The lack of those details does not weaken the existence of the charge, but it sharply limits what can responsibly be said about the narrative behind it.
The case therefore has two timelines moving at different speeds. The investigative timeline developed rapidly: a 911 call brought responders to the pool, detectives identified signs of a struggle, a person of interest was found nearby and a murder warrant followed. The public evidentiary timeline has moved more slowly. Weeks after the arrest, officials had still not released the full medical findings, a detailed reconstruction of the encounter or an officially stated motive. That difference explains why the central allegation is clear while many of the surrounding facts remain unsettled.
The early response also shows the separate roles of emergency personnel and criminal investigators. The first task at the pool was to try to save Walker-Zuniga. Only after those efforts failed did the focus move fully toward determining what had happened. Detectives examined the scene, developed Sudarsana as a person of interest and referred the evidence to prosecutors. The coroner’s office, meanwhile, handled the medical investigation and victim identification. Each part of that process contributed a different piece of the public account.
Authorities have not released information establishing that anyone else faces charges in connection with Walker-Zuniga’s death. They have not disclosed the existence of eyewitnesses, surveillance recordings or forensic test results in the official material reviewed for this article. Nor have they publicly released an account of any interview with Sudarsana. Those may be subjects of investigative or court records later, but reporting them now as established facts would go beyond what police and the coroner have confirmed.
The limited disclosures make the chronology unusually important. At 9:32 p.m., police were responding to an unresponsive person. By the next day, the department was publicly describing evidence of a recent physical struggle and announcing a murder charge. On Sept. 9, the coroner identified Walker-Zuniga and confirmed injuries during a reported assault. What has not followed publicly is equally notable: no authoritative update located through Oct. 20 supplied a final cause of death, an official motive or a disposition of the criminal case.
Sudarsana therefore remains accused of murder in a case that began with an emergency call and changed as detectives evaluated the scene. Hoover police continue to attribute Walker-Zuniga’s death to circumstances surrounding a physical struggle, while the precise medical findings and a fuller account of what led to the confrontation remain unresolved in the public record.
Author note: Last updated October 20, 2026.