The accused appeared in court after Washington deputies brought him back in the killing of Portland resident Courtney Clinton.
VANCOUVER, Wash. — A Clark County murder prosecution moved into open court in early April after Washington deputies extradited Dariel Nunez-Montero from Kentucky in the killing of Courtney Clinton, a Portland woman found dead in a vehicle with an unharmed infant in 2024.
What changed now was not the accusation itself but the case posture. Police had already obtained a first-degree murder warrant in April 2025, yet the suspect stayed out of Washington while he remained jailed in Kentucky on unrelated matters. The transfer on April 1, 2026, placed him in Clark County custody, and a first court appearance the next day gave the public its clearest sign that prosecutors were finally moving from investigation to courtroom proceedings.
At that April 2 hearing, local television coverage said Nunez-Montero appeared in a Clark County courtroom and was granted more time because he needed a translator to understand the proceedings. The report said he remained in custody and was due back on April 8. The hearing itself was brief, but it marked the first public courtroom step after a case that had stretched across two states and more than 16 months. The Clark County Sheriff’s Office had announced a day earlier that deputies completed the extradition from Montgomery County, Kentucky, and booked him into the Clark County Jail pending prosecution. Officials did not release new evidence with that notice, but the transfer answered a question that had hung over the case since last spring: when, not whether, the suspect would be returned to Washington.
That delay traces back to the way the case unfolded. Vancouver police said their Major Crimes Unit had worked the killing since Nov. 1, 2024, the day officers found Clinton dead in the 300 block of North Blandford Drive. By April 11, 2025, the city said detectives had developed enough evidence to secure a felony arrest warrant for first-degree murder. But Nunez-Montero was in Montgomery County on unrelated charges, so detectives went there and served him while he was already behind bars. Police then said he would await extradition. Publicly, the case entered a long quiet stretch after that announcement. The passage of time made the April 2026 transfer notable because it turned an already charged case into one that could finally move through arraignment, motions and trial-setting steps in the county where prosecutors say the crime happened.
The underlying homicide was brutal and, at first, thinly understood. Police were dispatched before dawn on Nov. 1, 2024, after a man reported a bloodied vehicle with an apparently lifeless woman inside. Officers found Clinton, 31, in a Ford Edge, and they also found an infant child in the vehicle who was not physically hurt. The Clark County Medical Examiner identified the victim as Courtney Valencia Clinton of Portland and ruled the death a homicide caused by incised wounds of the neck. A Vancouver police detective described the killing in early court filings as “apparently random and violent.” Investigators said no weapon was found at the scene, and early reports also said Clinton’s phone was missing. That combination left detectives trying to reconstruct not only who killed her but what happened during the three days between her last known movements and the discovery of the SUV.
Authorities later filled in parts of that gap with digital and forensic evidence. According to reporting on the probable cause affidavit, Clinton sent a friend her location at 3:38 a.m. on Oct. 29 from near the Walnut Grove Apartments on Northeast 72nd Avenue in Vancouver. Police said Nunez-Montero lived there. Video from a doorbell camera allegedly showed him leaving the apartment complex at 3:31 a.m. with a woman who resembled Clinton and carrying a baby carrier, then returning at 6:29 a.m. without her. The affidavit also said DNA tied him to the Ford Edge, and local TV later reported that the state crime lab matched his DNA to evidence recovered from passenger-side door handles. Investigators also recovered DNA from beneath Clinton’s fingernails, though public accounts reviewed so far do not say whether that material was matched. Records cited in coverage also mentioned a rental-car payment issue, an answered call to Clinton’s phone by someone else, and use of her debit card after she vanished.
Before the arrest, police had appealed openly for help. In a Nov. 15, 2024, release, Vancouver police said Clinton had last been in contact with family and friends during the week of Oct. 28 and asked the public to come forward with information. That appeal reflected how uncertain the case still was then. Investigators did not publicly identify a suspect for months, and officials gave few details beyond Clinton’s death, the surviving child and the location where the SUV was found. The child’s presence in the vehicle sharpened public attention each time the case resurfaced, but police said the child was unharmed and later in family care. Those details kept the focus on the violence of the scene while also showing that the investigation had to proceed carefully through records, surveillance and lab work before police were ready to name a defendant.
Where the case goes next depends on court process that is now only beginning in Washington. Prosecutors have publicly tied Nunez-Montero to a first-degree murder case, but full charging records, defense arguments and future hearing outcomes were not included in the materials reviewed here. That leaves several questions open, including whether additional charges could be filed, whether prosecutors will allege aggravating facts tied to the child’s presence, and how the defense will answer the timeline and DNA evidence. For now, the public record shows a suspect back in Clark County, a homicide charge already in place, and a case that has shifted from a months-long search for answers to a formal prosecution.
As of April 9, 2026, the latest publicly accessible milestone was the defendant’s April 2 appearance after extradition. Any later update from the April 8 setting was not readily available in the records and reports reviewed.
Author note: Last updated April 9, 2026.