Anthony Cooper drove an SUV into his girlfriend, Anastasia Rei Rayborn, police said. (Mug shot: Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office; screenshot: WWL)
A Louisiana man allegedly drove an SUV into his girlfriend, crushing her as the car knocked her through a building wall into a vacant clothing store and killing her. Locals said it happened after an argument, according to The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate.
Anthony Cooper, 31, is locked up at the Orleans Parish Justice Center. He started dating the victim, Anastasia Rei Rayborn, now 21, when he was 27 and she was 18, but he claimed to be 24, the victim’s stepsister Skye Guillory told the outlet.
He had gotten her the SUV.
“She was so happy, and then he never even let her drive it,” Guillory said.
Cooper was the father of Rayborn’s son.
“She chose the wrong man to be with,” Guillory said.
New Orleans cops said they responded at 11:08 a.m. on Monday to a call of a residential burglary in the 1100 block of Saint Roch Avenue, near the intersection of Marais Street. Officers arrived to find a gray Ford SUV had crashed into a building there. They detained Cooper for questioning.
“While investigating, officers entered the building and located an unresponsive female subject inside,” they wrote. “New Orleans EMS arrived on scene and subsequently pronounced the female to be deceased. At that time, NOPD Traffic Fatality Unit and Homicide Unit detectives were called. The incident was reclassified as a traffic fatality before later being determined to be a homicide.”
Detectives determined that Cooper was responsible. They arrested him for second-degree murder and booked him into the Orleans Parish Justice Center.
Surveillance footage allegedly showed the victim exiting out the front passenger side as Cooper had stopped the car, according to the outlet.
They yelled at each other, with Rayborn allegedly calling Cooper a “f—— b—-.”
Cooper allegedly veered right into Rayborn as she was on the sidewalk.
“He just ran her down,” Ann Linn, who lived in an apartment above the clothing store, told the outlet. “It’s awful.”
Muddy tire prints reportedly led from the street across the sidewalk and through a window.
Curt McClain, a former firefighter, was reportedly there and tried to help Rayborn but she had no pulse. Her body was reportedly bent at angles — he suspected her neck or back might have been broken.
He also said he saw a man frantically going in and out of the building, trying to help the woman.
“He had blood in his hands. He said he tried to turn her over,” McClain said. “Police said, ‘Were you driving?’ He said no, but they handcuffed him anyway.”
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