BATON ROUGE — Baton Rouge Police arrested a man and woman for the 2023 murder of the woman's boyfriend. 

According to arrest documents, Walneisha Richardson and her boyfriend Joshua Phillips got into an argument in October 2023 over a SIM card in her cellphone, and she said that Phillips kicked her out of their home on North Boulevard as a result.

She then "got aggravated and snapped," punching a window and severely cutting her right arm, saying she didn't do what she wanted to do, which was hit him as he hit her. She was eventually found in the street by a bystander. 

According to arrest records, Richardson had told Jermaine Savoy that Phillips had raped her. After this, the pair approached Phillips when Phillips and Richardson began arguing. In an effort to break up the fight, Savoy pushed Phillips, causing him to fall and hit his head on a cinder block. 

Savoy later told police that Richardson had stabbed Phillips multiple times after this with a boxcutter before Savoy grabbed Richardson off Phillips and the pair both went to nearby St. Vincent de Paul along North 17th Street. 

Phillips' body was eventually found in front of the North Boulevard home. An autopsy confirmed his cause of death as blunt force trauma to the head, as well as stabbing and asphyxiation. 

Savoy, who was incarcerated in the Richland Detention Center, was booked into the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison on second-degree murder charges on Feb. 26, 2026. Richardson was arrested on second-degree murder charges on March 2.