The fiancée of a Florida reporter who was shot and killed while on the job has welcomed their son Dylan via a surrogate and named him in tribute to his late father.
"In the Jewish religion, when someone passes away you name your children after them whether it's a first name or middle name," Casey Lynn Lyons tells PEOPLE. "I felt like giving our son his name was the most beautiful way to honor his memory."
Born on March 19 at 7 lbs., 10 oz., Lyons says she now understands why her journey to motherhood took so long. She believes God was "taking his time creating such a beautiful boy to be my son."
The momentous update comes after the boy's dad Dylan Lyons, a 24-year-old Spectrum News 13 journalist, was killed in a mass shooting in Pine Hills in February 2023. (Keith Moses -- the alleged gunman -- was later arrested and charged. A lawsuit filed by Dylan's family against the news station was dismissed in April.)
"When I found out the man I was so deeply in love with and was building a life with was murdered [it] was something I'll never forget," Casey adds. "Sometimes I still have PTSD flashbacks to that moment and how I couldn't even stand. An hour prior we were talking on the phone and suddenly he was gone, it was the worst moment of my life."
Looking back, Lyons says she was in love with Dylan since the two locked eyes on her first day of work at ABC affiliate WCJB in Gainesville in 2020. She worked as a producer. He was an on-air reporter.
"I would find any excuse to spark a conversation with him at work," she says. "Over time we became close friends, but I knew I could never be just friends with Dylan Lyons. I was head over heels for him after all."
In one of her favorite early memories with Dylan, she invited him to St. Augustine one weekend in October 2021. The two went to the beach and grabbed dinner at a seafood place -- even though Dylan was a vegetarian. All he ate was a baked potato, she says. That evening, the two shared their first kiss and began dating the following month.
From early on, Casey says the two started talking about having children together but they wanted to wait until her conversion to Judaism was finalized, noting that it was important to Dylan for their kids to be raised with his Jewish faith. They had also agreed on a couple of potential baby names.
"A month before he was murdered, he insisted on buying me a pregnancy test because he thought I could be pregnant," she says. "I think he wanted me to be, we were at that point in our relationship where we wanted to start trying."
Casey shares that for a long time she couldn't "function" or "do anything" in the wake of the shooting.
Meanwhile, Casey says Dylan's parents -- with whom she now lives and has grown close -- were her "biggest support."
"They always helped me the best they could in my dark days even though they were grieving the loss of a child," she adds. "Dylan's dad made a promise to Dylan that I was totally unaware of, that he would always take care of me if anything ever happened in life. We definitely leaned on each other in our grief."
Working with a grief counselor also showed her how to utilize her pain.
"I decided to live because Dylan can't anymore, so I want to live for him,"
the mom adds. Eventually, she made the decision to have his son through postmortem or posthumous sperm retrieval, or PSR, collecting his sperm shortly after his death.
Casey says the process to obtain his sperm was "stressful" because she was concerned she wouldn't be able to get it in time.
"To retrieve viable sperm after death it has to be collected within 24-36 hours," she explains. "We had to wait until Dylan's body was released because of the investigation. That took about 24 hours; then we had to find a urologist who would perform the procedure."
Once the doctor was found, Casey says that he went to the funeral home to perform the procedure, collecting eight tubes of Dylan's sperm before transferring them to an IVF clinic.
It then became a "lengthy" process until baby Dylan was ushered into the world. While Casey adds that she fortunately found her surrogate match within three months, it took five egg retrievals to make good-quality embryos and two failed transfers.
"There were days I would cry because I wasn't sure if I would ever become a mom," she says. But finally, Casey shares she found out the transfer was successful on July 18.
Now a month old, the mom says she plans to talk with baby Dylan about his dad and answer any questions he may have. And though it's bittersweet, Casey is hoping their future is filled with joy.
"This is what we always wanted together,"
she says. “However, Dylan is very much alive in my heart and now in our son's heart as well. He will always be with us.”