On the night of Dec. 18, 2022, Klara Dolin received a call from her father that changed her life forever.
Klara’s brother, Conor Dolin, was just 15 years old when he died in a car crash in Knoxville, Tennessee, due to what is believed to be reckless driving by another teen.
Klara was 22 when she lost her younger brother and in her second year of nursing school at The University of Tennessee, Chattanooga. She returned to school almost three weeks later.
“I was working my butt off to get where I wanted to go,” she said. “I only had two semesters (of undergrad) left. It was pretty hard, I had clinicals … being in the hospital and traveling back and forth …”
The details of that night remain unclear to the Dolin family, however.
“Basically, it all started to spiral from there,” Klara said.
Becoming vigilantes
On the night of the accident, Klara said her family never received a next of kin call, despite claims from the Knox County Sheriff’s Office that they had made an effort to inform the family.
After several missed calls to Conor’s phone, his parents, Ruth and Kevin Dolin, said another teen on site answered their calls and told them there had been an accident and to meet at UT Medical Center. The Dolins rushed to the hospital to learn that their son had been ejected from the car and died from his injuries.
“We didn’t know the basic details for a long time — what kind of car it was, where they were, who, anything, nothing. Me and my mom went down to the sheriff’s office and we’re like, ‘Is anyone ever gonna talk to us about this?’” Klara said.
With no communication almost four months later, Klara said her family began growing frustrated and impatient.
“We were told to expect a call from Sergeant Scott DeArmond,” she said.
DeArmond, a patrol and crash reconstruction officer at Knox County Sheriff’s Office, assisted in Conor’s case. When her family got a call from the sheriff’s office in April of 2023, Klara said they were told there was no drugs or alcohol involved, no excessive speeding occurred, and that this incident was deemed a freak accident.
Klara said she and her family knew from the beginning that there had to be something more than what they were being told.
The began investigative work of their own.
Klara and her mother talked with the homeowner who lives near the site of crash and made efforts to reach out to the families of the two other boys involved in the collision.
They attempted to piece together what they now consider an irresponsible and incomplete narrative of the investigation from the night they lost Conor.
The Dolin family obtained the initial crash report, which stated that the vehicle flipped on its side after striking a pole on Charlton Road.
“The crash report was wrong and incomplete,” Klara said.
Klara pointed out numerous inconsistencies — the direction the vehicle was traveling, claims that Conor was not ejected, and more information about the state of the vehicle’s damage. She found it all to be untrue.
“So we said screw this,” Klara said.
She and her mother then began contacting people to share their findings and seek guidance and answers.
“My mom put pressure on all these people; the post commission, DA, TBI, FBI … talked to county commissioners. We contacted everyone we could think of, and also did our article with Tyler.”
The details and updated timeline of the entire ongoing case and investigation conducted by Klara and Ruth Dolin may be found here, courtesy of Tyler Whestone of Knox News.
Grieving for answers
Almost three years later, Klara and her family are still actively seeking justice for Conor.
“We are often asked ‘What has taken so long, how are we not finding things out sooner, it’s been like two years’ … but you wouldn’t think anybody is lying to you,” she said.
“Conor was the victim of a crime, so we have to treat it like that. It’s not any less devastating than other things, but it was a crime.”
In April of 2025, Klara and her family sat down with Lieutenant Chris Allison, who explained the findings of the internal investigation requested by the family.
The conversation with Allison confirmed what the Dolins had feared.
In an audio recording sent to The Daily Beacon, Allison admitted that the Knox County Sheriff’s Office dropped the ball.
“We didn’t do a thorough investigation for your son and you all,” Allison said.
He offered solace to the Dolin family.
“Good for you for pushing and pushing … if it were me, I’d probably be in jail,” he said.
Klara said the reason her family has so strongly tried to pursue further investigation is because they believe nothing would ever happen otherwise.
“There was never going to be accountability, no one was going to have to answer to this,” Klara said.
According to Klara, the main goal of all of the investigative work done by her and her mother is not to put someone behind bars. She said this is about advocating for Conor.
Klara said she does remain concerned, however, that no action was taken against anyone involved in the crash.
“I just think they (the two people in the vehicle) should at least have to be made to sit across from us, and tell us what the hell happened. At the very least,” Klara said. “They (KCSO) treated him like he was a squirrel on the side of the road.”
Klara and her mother continued to press for some law enforcement acton to address the reckless driving that ended Conor’s life.
They were told in the recorded April 2025 meeting with Lieutenant Chris Allison that enough probable cause was present to recommend charges of reckless vehicular homicide.
The Knoxville office of the District Attorney General declined Allison’s proposal to pursue charges in a May 2025 letter, due to “very limited evidence…our office cannot prove reckless vehicular homicide or reckless homicide beyond a reasonable doubt.”
While having made strides in their investigation, Klara and her family have been left with one final conclusion: The lack of investigation for Conor was wrongful and preventable.
Klara said she and her family are no different from anyone else in Knoxville, and that they are just “ordinary people.”
“At the end of the day, Knoxville is a big place, but not that big of a place. We go to work, we go to school, we hang out with our friends, we live our lives … If they are doing this to us they are doing it to other people,” Klara said.
As of Oct. 20, Klara informed The Daily Beacon that the sheriff’s office informed them that no one from their office will meet with the Dolin family moving forward, and all further questions should be directed to their lawyer.
The Sheriff’s Office has not responded for a request for comment from The Daily Beacon.
Doing it for Conor
Now 25, Klara is a grad student in the Doctorate of Nursing Practice hybrid program at UT, set to graduate in May 2027.
“Starting the online program here, hybrid, I really appreciate that,” she said. “If I had to go in person for everything, there would be no way.”
Her new normal can feel “isolating,” as she said she feels like she has “taken on a whole other full time job.”
“When I am in class, I never know what’s going to happen. Is there going to be a call I get, some kind of, I don’t know, just something that happens. It’s weird and isolating to go through something like that, not only because you have to process it, but because you don’t even have the details to process the information,” she said.
Today, Klara works at the crisis stabilization unit at East Tennessee Children’s Hospital with the in-patient program, where she loves working with kids.
“I want to be able to do therapy and (medicine) management, and help kids who go through something like this — with them struggling as well.”
Her unique perspective from the situation her family experienced is something she plans to utilize from a professional standpoint.
“(I want to) help kids with their mental health. This degree will set me up to be able to do that. It can be hard, but I am glad to be in grad school here,” she said. “It will help me reach my end goal.”
Her end goal is to have a private practice of her own, where she can see children experiencing crises on a regular basis, and be able to develop a relationship with them.
She explained that the lack of explanation and answers for her brother’s death made it harder to process the situation, ultimately leading to some turmoil between her family. “Going to therapy during the crisis I experienced was “the best decision I ever made,” she said.
“… Having a mediator, having a person that can help us work those things out, I credit that to why I still have a good relationship with my parents today. Something like this can tear your family apart … You have to work to maintain your relationships.”
When asked about one thing she would want the world to know about her, Klara said, “This is not going to break me. This is not going to break my family and we are not going to stop talking about it. This is the life I live — we — we live this life every single day. I carry this experience with me through the perspective I have been given every day.”
Klara remembers her brother Conor as someone who had the most character out of anyone she had ever met.
She reflected on Conor’s achievements, such as being an amateur boxer and a STEM academy student, saying that boxing was Conor’s “deal.”
“He fell in love with it when he was around 13. He went every morning before school and before STEM academy. It was his passion. He kind of had an addictive personality toward that, and just to good things.”
She said that he was also one of the strongest people she knew.
“Conor was a bad ass. He got into that ring and he would fight grown men. The strength and courage … He was inspiring. He was a huge motivation for me and he is still a huge motivation for me now to do all of this because he deserves it.”
“That’s what I want people to know, is that he deserves this. We deserve this. And we are not going to stop.”
