A judge in Baton Rouge shut down RealBleeda’s bond request this week, keeping the 24-year-old rapper locked up in East Baton Rouge Parish Prison as his first-degree murder case moves forward.
The decision came from Judge Louise Hines on Thursday, and it means David Catherine, the rapper’s legal name, stays behind bars while facing charges that could carry life without parole or the death penalty.
The case centers on the death of Teressa Calligan, a youth advocate and dean of coding for the Futures Fund division of the Walls Project, an organization that ran tech programs for teenagers in the Baton Rouge area.
On September 15, 2024, Calligan was stopped at a red light on Airline Highway when a vehicle pulled up beside her and someone opened fire. She lost control of her car, crashed into a sheriff’s office unit, and was pronounced dead at the scene.
RealBleeda is one of three defendants in the case, alongside Roger Parker and Robert Lewis, both facing the same first-degree murder and obstruction of justice charges. The fact that all three are being prosecuted together adds a layer of complexity to what is already a high-profile case in Louisiana.
His legal team came to the bond hearing with an alibi witness, McKenzie Roach, who testified that she was with RealBleeda at his West Baton Rouge home the night Calligan was killed. Attorney Ryan Thompson pushed hard on the argument that law enforcement never properly investigated Roach as a witness, suggesting that a more thorough look at her account could have shifted the direction of the case entirely.
Judge Hines was not moved enough to grant release, though, and the bond denial puts RealBleeda in a difficult position heading into what could be a lengthy legal process.
In Louisiana, first-degree murder is about as serious as it gets on the charging sheet, and the prosecution will be looking to build on whatever evidence they already have connecting him to the scene.
Court records also show that RealBleeda has a documented connection to the Bleedas gang, referenced in a separate Monroe case, which prosecutors could potentially use to establish context around the alleged crime.
That kind of background detail rarely helps a defendant’s case when a judge is weighing bond, and it likely factored into the atmosphere of Thursday’s hearing even if it was not the deciding factor.
Calligan’s role in the community has made this case particularly charged for people in Baton Rouge. She was not a peripheral figure, she was someone actively working to give young people in the city a path forward through technology and education, and the circumstances of her death, shot at a red light while driving, have kept public attention on the case since September.
With two co-defendants also in custody and a trial date yet to be set, the legal process is still in its early stages.
RealBleeda’s team will likely continue pressing the alibi angle, and the question of how thoroughly police investigated Roach’s account before the arrest is one that could resurface.
