BATON ROUGE — More than two years after a 37-year-old man was allegedly beaten and stabbed to death outside his own home, Baton Rouge Police have now arrested his girlfriend on a murder charge.
Officers found Joshua Phillips dead on the sidewalk outside his home around 6 a.m. on Oct. 25, 2023. Fast forward to March 2026, and Walneisha Richardson, who said he was her boyfriend, has been booked with second-degree murder in his death.
Jermaine Savoy, 25, was arrested on Feb. 27, 2026, in the crime. He started cooperating with officers and painted a picture of what may have happened the night Phillips died, according to Richardson’s arrest warrant.
Savoy told detectives that he spoke to Richardson at the St. Vincent de Paul shelter. He told officers she told him Phillips had raped her. That’s when they went from the shelter to Phillips’ home nearby to confront him, the warrant said.
Savoy said “Richardson hit Phillips in the head with a 2×4 piece of wood in the front yard of the residence,” the warrant said. He tried to break up the fight and “pushed Phillips in the chest causing him to fall in the front yard and hit his head on a concrete cinder block,” the warrant added.
“Savoy stated Richardson then continued to attack Phillips while he was on the ground stabbing him several times in the leg and torso area with a box-cutter. Savoy stated he grabbed Richardson off Phillips,” the warrant said.
An autopsy showed that Phillips had three separate injuries and that each would have been fatal on its own, according to Richardson’s warrant. There was also blunt force trauma to his head, a stab wound to his lower leg and asphyxiation from broken cartilage in his larynx, the warrant said.
Walneisha Richardson, 28, was booked Sunday on second-degree murder in the crime. Jermaine Savoy, 25, was booked Thursday with the same crime.
Earlier encounter
Paramedics had just tended to Richardson a few hours prior to her boyfriend’s murder, records show.
A man called 911 to report that he had found a woman in the road who was “bleeding profusely” and needed help, according to the arrest warrant. She told the man she got into an argument with her boyfriend over a cell phone SIM card. She refused medical care around 1:25 a.m.
Later, while officers worked the Phillips crime scene, they learned that Richardson was at a gas station nearby. Officers picked her up from there and took her to a hospital to be treated for a severe cut on her right upper arm. Then they took her for questioning to the police department, where she told officers that she had injured her arm punching out a window in Phillips’ house. She said she didn’t hit him like he had hit her, the warrant said.
Police later found surveillance video at St. Vincent de Paul shelter that showed Richardson arriving there a short time after she refused medical care from EMS. She is seen on the video talking to a man who leaves the courtyard with her around 2:30 a.m., the warrant said.
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