The mother of LSU student Madison Brooks who died after she was allegedly raped by three men has detailed her daughter’s heartbreaking final moments.
- Madison Brooks, 19, was killed when she was hit by a car on January 15 2023
- She was allegedly raped by men who then left her on the side of the road
Brooks, 19, was killed when she was hit by a car in East Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on January 15 2023 after she was allegedly raped by a group of men and left on the side of the road.
Three men have been charged with first degree rape, Kaivon Washington, Casen Carver and Desmond Carter – and a fourth, Everett Lee, was arrested but has not been charged.
Speaking with Nancy Grace on Tuesday, Brooks’ mother, Ashley Bausteret, described Brooks’ final moments saying: ‘The worst possible thing that can happen to anyone happened to my daughter.’
Bausteret rushed to the hospital after Brooks was hit by a car on the highway around 3am, she said: ‘I suspected just based on the circumstances, the time of day, the fact she was alone without her cell phone, that something terrible had happened.’
LSU student Brooks was allegedly raped in the back of the men’s car while the others watched after a night of drinking at a bar in Tigerland.
After the alleged attack in their car, the suspects allegedly left Brooks stumbling and drunk on the side of a busy four-lane highway.
She was hit by a car around 3am. The driver of the car called emergency services while two passersby stopped and tried to save her life, giving her CPR, but Brooks later died from her injuries in hospital.
Her alleged attackers claim they did not rape her and say only consensual sex happened in the back of the car.
Her mother has now revealed the heartbreaking aftermath of the attack and crash.
Bausteret said: ‘Immediately when I saw her, I knew that something terrible had happened and that she was with our Lord in heaven.
‘They told me immediately that she was brain dead, so they were keeping her alive. They were keeping her heart beating and pumping her with all different types of medication just to save her organs so that she could be a donor.’
‘And we were also waiting for her dad to travel from Florida to be at the hospital. So Madi was there and she was breathing, but she was not there.’
The moment she saw her daughter, she said she knew ‘something terrible had happened’.
She said: ‘I could hold her hands, but I didn’t want to look at anything else. I didn’t want that image to be in my head. I wanted to remember her the way that she was.’
After Madison died her family waited for answers.
Bausteret said: ‘A week or so after the accident the detective brought us in and told us more of what they had learned through their investigation. I had to leave the room, I fell to my knees. It was a nightmare. It was an absolute nightmare.’
The four men who allegedly left Brooks on the side of the road are standing trial for the alleged rape.
The judge presiding over the trials has come under intense scrutiny for her recent decisions to release an accused rapist on reduced bail without informing the victim’s family and to overturn a historic rape conviction.
District Judge Gail Horne Ray’s decisions have raised questions over a potential conflict of interest in Brooks’ case, but Bausteret said she ‘cannot comment’ on the judge’.
Ray’s impartiality has been called into question after she dismissed Donald Ray Link’s 1972 rape conviction this month and released rape suspect De’Aundre Cox on reduced bail last year.
East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore III has clashed with Ray over the decisions telling WBRZ: ‘I’ve never seen this done ever or heard of it ever done before.’
Ray’s son, Nelson Dan Taylor Jr, was convicted of raping multiple classmates – aged between 12 and 17 – between 1995 and 1996, breaking into their homes in a mask and attacking them at knifepoint.
He pleaded guilty to all of the rapes and was sentenced to 50 years in prison with a requirement to serve at least 25.
Ray took office as a 19th Judicial District Court judge January 12, 2023.
Three months later, she released De’Aundre Cox, who was accused of raping his preteen neighbor, on reduced bail without alerting the victim or notifying the district attorney’s office.
Cox is facing two counts of aggravated rape against a now-teenage girl who lives near his family’s home in the Park Forest neighborhood. She was 12 when the alleged sexual abuse began.
She told officers that Cox threatened her with a gun before raping her on two occasions. The abuse was discovered when the victim’s older brother, who was friends with Cox, found a video of the attacks on his phone.
District Attorney Hillar Moore slammed Ray’s decision to release him last April and said his office was only notified a week after he was released.
He told The Advocate at the time: ‘We really are confused as to how this bond was reduced without notice to the state and an opportunity for us to be heard on behalf of the victim. And we are concerned as to what happened and how it happened.’
The victim’s mother told the outlet that the family ‘live in fear’ and said: ‘Why didn’t they let me know? We could’ve changed up, because these people have already threatened me.’
This month, Ray clashed with the DA again over her decision to throw out convicted rapist Donald Ray Link’s 1972 conviction for aggravated rape.
Link was serving a life sentence for threatening a woman with a butcher’s knife before raping her.
He appeared before Ray asking her to reduce his sentence so he could ask for parole.
Instead of reducing his sentence, she overturned his conviction entirely, bypassing the parole process.
Moore told WBRZ her decision was ‘unheard of’, adding: ‘She has no authority whatsoever to do what she did and her reasoning was erroneous.’
Ray’s decisions and her family history have raised further questions over Ray’s impartiality in the ongoing Brooks case.
Brooks was last seen drunkenly stumbling out of Reggie’s bar, which has since had its license revoked, with the group.
Other footage released by authorities shows the student running after the group of men on the night she died.
Brooks died after being hit by a ride-share car at 3am on January 15, when she was dropped off on the side of the highway by the four men.
Two Good Samaritans reportedly stopped to perform CPR on the sophomore LSU student after the collision.
East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner’s Office says they were guided by first responders on the phone in the pouring rain after Madi was hit by the ride-share car.
They confirmed that Madi Brooks died from ‘multiple traumatic injuries’ when she was hit by a car after allegedly being raped.
Police confirmed that the driver of the vehicle will not be charged as he was not impaired and contacted emergency services immediately.
A memorial was created for the ‘amazing young woman’ who had ‘limitless potential’ by her friends on the highway where she died.