A Maryland man has been appointed his third defense attorney in what prosecutors say is a ploy to delay his trial on murder charges.
Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge Stephen Shannon on Monday (Oct. 26) appointed Thomas F. Koerner Jr. to represent 32-year-old Tylen Jennings.
Jennings is facing charges of first-degree murder, using a firearm in a felony and abduction in the March 2024 killing of Anesha Isaacs near the Inova Fairfax Medical Campus in Woodburn.
Isaacs and Jennings had dated for about a year, but were no longer together at the time, according to a transcript of witness testimony from a preliminary hearing.
Police have said that Isaacs — a 30-year-old medical worker for the nonprofit VHO Inc., WUSA9 previously reported — was leaving work for the day when Jennings blocked her car. They said she was on the phone with emergency dispatchers as Jennings opened fire on her from his vehicle.
Isaacs told the dispatcher that she had a protective order against Jennings at the time, and a Maryland court had issued arrest warrants for him, according to the Fairfax County Police Department.
After the shooting, Jennings was found and arrested in Prince George’s County, Maryland. A gun was found in his vehicle, police said.
Jennings’s first attorney withdrew in September 2025 because she felt the attorney-client relationship had “deteriorated,” his family and friends had “zero confidence” in her abilities and she felt it would be “unethical” to continue as his counsel, she wrote in a motion.
A different attorney was appointed later that month as Jennings’ counsel. He served until he too filed a motion on Oct. 7 saying that he needed to step away for “reasons implicating counsel’s professional and ethical obligations.”
In a filing objecting to the second defense attorney’s dismissal, prosecutors argued that Jennings was merely trying to delay the court proceedings. They cited a recorded phone call from the jail prior to a previous hearing in which Jennings allegedly said he would feign ignorance of the charges before he did so in court.
Despite the objections, Shannon appointed Koerner and set a status hearing for Friday, Oct. 30. Jennings is being held without bond in the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center.
