RaKetrah Lashawn “KeKe” Hatcher was a 33-year-old Black woman from Birmingham, Alabama, and in the earliest hours of March 22, 2019, a ride through the city ended in a violent, sudden silence. Just after 3:00 a.m., she was in the passenger seat as the car sped along Richard Arrington Jr. Boulevard North, cutting through the Kingston neighborhood where streetlights and sleeping houses blur together in the dark.
At about 3:18 a.m., the vehicle slammed into a utility pole in the 4200 block, the impact crushing the calm of the block and leaving her fatally injured at the scene.
Police identified the driver as Deyarpolus Rudolph, a Birmingham man who survived the wreck and was taken for medical treatment. In the months that followed, investigators focused not on an unknown assailant but on the decisions behind the wheel—whether impairment and recklessness turned an ordinary drive into a death.
By late September 2019, authorities moved the case from tragedy to prosecution. Rudolph was arrested on September 30, 2019, and released the same day after posting a $60,000 bond, as the allegations hardened into a formal accusation that the crash was not simply an accident but a crime. He was charged with vehicular manslaughter in connection with Hatcher’s death, and reports tied the charge to claims that he was driving under the influence when he lost control and struck the pole.
In 2020, a grand jury indictment followed, elevating the case again—another official step that signaled prosecutors believed the evidence supported moving forward in court. Public reporting described the indictment as a reckless manslaughter case stemming from the same March 22, 2019 wreck, keeping the spotlight fixed on Rudolph as the sole suspect and defendant tied to her death.
