Jurors moved by horrific 911 tape

This story was published in The Advocate on May 21, 2012. 

Prosecutors played a tape recording Saturday of the horrific 911 call that ended with the screams of Patricia Aldridge being shot 13 times by an AK-47, while multiple jurors burst into tears and the defendant, Derrick Gordy, leaned back in his chair and stared straight ahead.

The five-minute tape, recorded on Sept. 30, 2009, started with Aldridge calmly telling the dispatcher that four black male assailants had threatened her son’s life outside their South Sunderland Avenue home. A few minutes later, Aldridge could be heard goading the subjects.

“C’mon, try to hit me … uh huh … c’mon … here they come, here they come,” Aldridge said just before the call suddenly erupted into chilling screams and a barrage of gunfire that lasted between 10 and 30 seconds.

“Ma’am? Ma’am?” the dispatcher asked.

“I’m dead,” Aldridge said, before the sounds of gunfire took over the recording. Read more of this post

Police arrest man during rapper’s trial accused of tweeting threats to DA

This story was published on page A1 of The Advocate on May 9, 2012. 

East Baton Rouge Parish sheriff’s deputies arrested a 21-year-old man Monday for threatening on Twitter to shoot District Attorney Hillar Moore III outside the trial of rapper Torence “Lil Boosie” Hatch, authorities said.

Deputies said they found Dedrick Deandre Green, 14004 Longvue Drive, Baker, sitting in the courtroom Monday afternoon, watching Hatch’s first-degree murder trial.

Green was booked into Parish Prison on felony counts of public intimidation and terrorizing, according to an affidavit of probable cause.

“I got a sniper rifle for Hillar Moore when he walk out the courthouse,” Green posted on Twitter at about 3:40 p.m. Saturday, the affidavit says. Read more of this post

Police link St. Gabriel man to burned gay hairdresser’s corpse through victim’s social media account

This story was published in The Advocate on May 6, 2012. 

East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff Sid Gautreaux announced Thursday the arrest of a suspect in the slaying of a Baton

Rouge hairdresser whose burned body was discovered in the trunk of a car abandoned on the Mississippi River levee.

Gautreaux said events leading up to the murder began Sunday evening when the hairdresser, Roderick White, 33, drove himself to a mobile home in St. Gabriel to meet for the first time with Jason Mascarella, 34, a man he had been chatting with online.

The men had met on either Twitter or Facebook, said Todd Morris, a sheriff’s detective and lead investigator on the case. Read more of this post