A man accused of taking part in the shooting of a Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP) officer in Putnam County had a history of violent crime, according to court records.
Braze Rucker was charged with a litany of crimes committed during a robbery attempt in Nashville in 2013. The charges stemmed from a robbery in which Rucker shot one person, leaving her paralyzed.
Those crimes included two counts of attempted criminal homicide, two counts of especially aggravated robbery, one count of aggravated robbery, one count of possession of a firearm during the commission of a dangerous felony, one count of attempted first-degree murder, and one count of aggravated assault.
In 2016, though, nearly all of those charges were dismissed.
He was convicted only of aggravated assault and attempted, especially aggravated assault and sentenced to 14 years in prison. He served less than five years before being released back onto the streets.
Rucker (pictured above) was a passenger in the car driven by Timothy Davis Jr. last week. Davis allegedly opened fire on THP Trooper Adam Cothron, who sustained serious injuries and remains hospitalized at the time of publication.
Rucker fled to Kentucky, where he was captured on Sunday by the Kentucky State Police. The next day, he was extradited to Tennessee and booked into the Putnam County Jail on charges of criminal responsibility of facilitation of a felony.
According to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI), Davis was apprehended on Tuesday night. He has been charged with attempted first-degree murder.
“Investigative efforts revealed the trooper stopped a white Kia Forte, with a temporary tag, driven by Timothy Laquan Davis, Jr. (DOB 7/9/1999),” TBI said in a Wednesday release. “As the trooper approached the vehicle, the driver fired upon him, critically wounding him. At the time of this release, the trooper remained hospitalized in Nashville.”
Davidson County District Attorney General Glenn Funk, who has been in office since 2014, has taken heat for his office’s soft-on-crime policies.
In 2017, he launched a “restorative justice” program in the district, in which the perpetrator of a crime who apologizes to the victim and takes responsibility could receive lighter punishments.
“What has to happen is the offender has to accept responsibility,” Funk told WKRN at the time. “They have to admit to what they did, they have to meet with the victim, they find out what they need to do to make the victim whole, and then they have to take concrete steps to try to make the victim whole.”
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on X/Twitter.
