D.C. man with manslaughter record gets life for road rage killing of Uber Eats driver

A Washington, D.C., man with a prior manslaughter conviction was sentenced Monday to life in prison for a road rage killing that left an Uber Eats driver paralyzed and ultimately dead.

Rodney Baggott, 58, was sentenced in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for the fatal 2024 shooting of Rasheek Abdullah near the Dupont Circle Metro Station, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said Tuesday.

A federal jury found him guilty on July 24, after one day of deliberations, of first-degree murder while armed, possession of a firearm during a crime of violence, and two counts of unlawful possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Prosecutors said the shooting occurred shortly before 4 p.m. on Jan. 30, 2024, near Connecticut Avenue and Q Street NW. As Baggott made a right turn, Abdullah passed him on the left. Believing he had been cut off, Baggott pulled alongside Abdullah and shot him in the neck.

Abdullah was left quadriplegic and died three months later, on April 29, 2024.

Baggott fled with his girlfriend, who later called an auto body shop to repair distinctive damage to the vehicle — damage that appeared in a police bulletin and helped link him to the crime.

Investigators got a break March 2, 2024, when a Montgomery County police officer stopped Baggott driving the same SUV and found him in illegal possession of a firearm. A search of his girlfriend’s apartment the next day recovered the gun used in the shooting, which contained DNA linking both to the weapon.

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro called Baggott “a previously convicted killer” who “took another man’s life in a senseless act of violence for nothing more than passing him on the road.”

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Benjamin Helfand and Daniel Seidel, along with former Assistant U.S. Attorney Cameron Tepfer, prosecuted the case.