Desperate mother of LSU student who died after alleged rape reveals her daughter Madison Brooks’ heartbreaking final moments

The mother of LSU student Madison Brooks, who died after allegedly being raped by three men, has described her daughter’s heartbreaking final moments.

Brooks, 19, died on January 15, 2023, when she was hit by a car in East Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She had previously allegedly been raped by a group of men and left on the side of the road.

Three men were charged with first-degree rape: Kaivon Washington, Casen Carver and Desmond Carter. A fourth, Everett Lee, was arrested but not charged.

Speaking to Nancy Grace on Tuesday, Brooks’ mother, Ashley Bausteret, described Brooks’ final moments, saying, “The worst thing that can happen to a human being happened to my daughter.”

Bausteret rushed to the hospital after Brooks was hit by a car on the highway at around 3 a.m. She said: “Due to the circumstances, the time of day and the fact that she was alone and without a cell phone, I suspected something terrible had happened.”

LSU student Brooks was allegedly raped in the back seat of the men’s car after a night of drinking at a bar in Tigerland while others watched.

After the alleged attack in her car, the suspects allegedly left Brooks staggering and drunk on the side of a busy four-lane highway.

She was hit by a car at around 3 a.m. The driver of the car called emergency services while two passersby stopped and tried to save her life by starting CPR. However, Brooks later succumbed to her injuries in hospital.

Her alleged attackers claim they did not rape her and say there was only consensual sex in the back seat of the car.

Her mother has now described the heartbreaking consequences of the attack and the crash.

Bausteret said: “When I saw her, I knew immediately that something terrible had happened and that she was with our Lord in heaven.”

“They told me right away that she was brain dead, so they kept her alive. They kept her heart beating and pumped all kinds of drugs into her chest just to save her organs so she could serve as a donor.”

“And we were also waiting for her father to come to the hospital from Florida. So Madi was there and she was breathing, but she wasn’t there.”

The moment she saw her daughter, she knew that “something terrible had happened.”

She said: “I could hold her hands, but I didn’t want to see anything else. I didn’t want to have that image in my head. I wanted to remember her as she was.”

After Madison’s death, her family waited for answers.

Bausteret said: “About a week after the accident, the detective brought us in and told us more about what they had found out through their investigation. I had to leave the room and 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 on trial for the alleged rape.

The judges presiding over the trial have come under sharp criticism for their recent decisions to release a rape defendant on reduced bail without notifying the victim’s family and to overturn a historic rape conviction.

District Judge Gail Horne Ray’s decisions have raised questions about a possible conflict of interest in the Brooks case, but Bausteret said she could not comment on the judge.

Ray’s impartiality was called into question after she overturned the 1972 rape conviction of Donald Ray Link 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 anything like this done, nor heard of it.”

Ray’s son, Nelson Dan Taylor Jr., was found guilty of raping several classmates between the ages of 12 and 17 between 1995 and 1996. He broke into their homes wearing a mask and attacked them with a knife.

He pleaded guilty to all rape charges and was sentenced to 50 years in prison, of which he had to serve a minimum of 25 years.

Ray took office as judge of the 19th District Court on January 12, 2023.

Three months later, she released De’Aundre Cox, who was accused of raping his underage neighbor, on reduced bail without informing the victim or notifying prosecutors.

Cox is accused of two counts of aggravated rape of 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 twice. 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 sharply criticized Ray’s decision to release him last April, saying his office was not informed until a week after his release.

He told The Advocate at the time: “We are really confused as to how this bail could have been reduced without the state being notified and without us having an opportunity to be heard on behalf of the victim. And we are concerned about what happened and how it happened.”

The victim’s mother told the news agency that the family was “living in fear” and said: “Why didn’t they tell me? We could have changed because these people were already threatening me.”

This month, Ray again clashed with prosecutors over their decision to overturn convicted rapist Donald Ray Link’s 1972 aggravated rape conviction.

Link was serving a life sentence for threatening a woman with a butcher knife and then raping her.

He appeared before Ray and asked her to reduce his sentence so he could ask for parole.

Instead of reducing his sentence, she overturned his conviction entirely, thereby bypassing the parole process.

Moore told WBRZ her decision was “unprecedented,” adding, “She has no authority whatsoever for her decision and her reasoning was flawed.”

Ray’s decisions and her family history have raised further questions about Ray’s impartiality in the ongoing Brooks case.

Brooks was last seen stumbling drunk with the group out of Reggie’s Bar, which has since had its license revoked.

Further footage released by authorities shows the student running after the group of men on the night of her death.

Brooks died when she was struck by a rideshare car at 3 a.m. on January 15 after the four men dropped her off on the side of the road.

Two Good Samaritans reportedly stopped after the collision to perform CPR on the LSU sophomore.

The East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner’s Office said they were directed by emergency responders on the phone in the pouring rain after Madi was struck by the ride-share car.

They confirmed that Madi Brooks died of “multiple traumatic injuries” when she was hit by a car following an alleged rape.

Police confirmed that no charges would be brought against the driver of the vehicle as he was not impaired and immediately contacted emergency services.

On the highway where she died, her friends erected a memorial to the “amazing young woman” who had “limitless potential.”