A Washington man who opened fire during a Dupont Circle traffic spat will spend the rest of his life behind bars. On Tuesday, a judge sentenced Rodney Baggott to life in prison without the possibility of release for the road-rage killing of Uber Eats driver Rasheek Abdullah, closing a case that started with a brief driving dispute on Jan. 30, 2024 and stretched through a jury trial last year. Abdullah, 28, was shot in the neck and fought for his life for months before dying in the hospital.
According to WUSA9, the sentence was handed down in Superior Court on March 17, 2026. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro called the killing a senseless reaction to a minor driving maneuver, and prosecutors pushed for a life term, pointing to Baggott’s history of violent crime.
How prosecutors built the case
Court records state that the confrontation began as Baggott made a right turn while Abdullah’s car passed him on the left. Baggott then pulled his vehicle alongside Abdullah’s, drew a handgun and fired a shot into Abdullah’s neck.
A press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office says Baggott fled the scene with his then-girlfriend in the car. Investigators later learned that she called an auto-body shop seeking repairs for distinctive damage, a detail that helped tie Baggott’s Mitsubishi to the shooting. Officers stopped the car on March 2, 2024, and the next day recovered a firearm from the girlfriend’s apartment that prosecutors say carried DNA linking both Baggott and the girlfriend to the weapon.
Victim and timeline
Abdullah, an Uber Eats driver, was rushed to a local hospital immediately after the Jan. 30 shooting. He remained hospitalized for roughly three months before dying on April 29, 2024, according to local reporting. After his death, the Metropolitan Police Department told investigators it intended to upgrade the charges against the suspect, according to DC Witness.
Court records and local coverage also show that Baggott had a prior conviction for a 2015 shooting. He pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter while armed in that case and later received an eight-year sentence, as reported by DC Witness.
Conviction and sentence
A federal jury found Baggott guilty on July 24, 2025 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 felon, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a July 2025 announcement. Prosecutors told the court that DNA from the recovered gun and the tip from the repair shop were key pieces of evidence tying him to the killing.
Baggott was initially scheduled to be sentenced in December 2025, but the hearing was postponed. On Tuesday, after prosecutors urged the maximum punishment allowed, the judge imposed life in prison without the possibility of parole.
What comes next
Victim advocates and prosecutors described the life sentence as a measure of closure for Abdullah’s family, even as it cannot undo the loss. Defense attorneys did not immediately say whether they plan to appeal.
As WUSA9 noted, the case stands as a stark reminder of how a fleeting traffic dispute spiraled into deadly violence and resulted in the harshest sentence available in the District.
