BATON ROUGE — Police have arrested a third person—the suspected gunman—in a May attack in which a woman’s vehicle was followed before she was then shot and injured from a weapon in the other vehicle.
Rodney Charles Jr., 19, was arrested on June 30 booked with attempted second-degree murder, aggravated criminal damage to property and illegal use of a weapon.
Two other suspects in the crime were arrested earlier in June.
The woman told police she was on the way home from a friend’s house on May 25 when she noticed a gray pickup truck following her, according to police records. The victim stopped at a red light at Airline Highway and Tom Drive, and then a woman got out of the pickup truck holding a cell phone and started recording the victim and her vehicle.
The victim told police she recognized the woman with the phone because they had an argument a month ago. She then started recording the encounter on her own phone. The other woman walked around the victim’s vehicle, kicked it and yelled for the victim to get out, according to police records.
She did not get out of the vehicle, but drove away when the light turned green. The truck followed her for several blocks. At Lobdell Boulevard, someone in the truck allegedly fired two shots at her vehicle. She kept going.
When she got to Greenwell Springs Road, the truck pulled alongside her vehicle and the person in the back passenger seat of the truck shot several times into her vehicle, hitting her in her hand, back and hip, according to a warrant. A bullet also grazed the victim’s face.
Despite being critically injured, the woman was able to drive to a nearby gas station for help.
Rodney Charles Jr. is accused of being the person who shot her from the back seat of the truck, according to his arrest warrant. He has a previous arrest history and also pleaded guilty to illegal carrying of a weapon, where he was sentenced to serve six months in parish prison, according to his warrant.
In mid-June, police arrested two others in connection to the shooting incident.
Taliyah Dupaty, 23, was charged as a principal to attempted second-degree murder, principal to illegal use of a weapon and principal to aggravated criminal damage to property. She is accused of being the woman who got out of the truck and accosted the victim at the red light.
Dupaty faces multiple charges in Livingston Parish. She’s currently in the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison, but will be transferred to the Livingston Parish Detention Center later on, sources tell UWK.
Dupaty’s boyfriend Alick Washington, 18, was arrested on June 11 on the same charges as Dupaty for the May incident. He was wearing a GPS ankle monitor at the time of the crime because he was out on bond in a previous arrest, according to officials. He remains in the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison.
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