Witnesses: Woman tried to pay off grandson’s debt to diffuse fight that led to her slaying

As Billy Desrosiers and Corey Steplight argued outside their 24th Street homes over an unsettled debt, witnesses said Steplight’s grandmother intervened, offering to pay the $500 her grandson owed.

“OK, I’ll give it… I will give you the money,” Ruby Steplight told Desrosiers, according to testimony in the case.

The 83-year-old had raised Corey Steplight, 25, since he was an infant and stood by him even as he faced a murder trial at age 15. But she was unable to diffuse the argument between her grandson and Desrosier, witnesses said.

After the Sept. 29 argument ended in gunfire, Desrosiers took his revenge against her grandson on Ruby Steplight instead, authorities said — executing her inside her home.

Ruby Steplight’s attempt to pay her grandson’s debt was revealed in a pair of interviews filed this month in the case against Corey Steplight, who faces charges of attempted first-degree murder. Authorities say he shot Desrosiers and three other people.

In the interviews, recorded by detectives days after the incident, Desrosier’s fiancée, LaSaisha Williams, and her friend, Mikea Sterling, detailed how Steplight obtained the gun deputies said he used to shoot them, and why he may have started firing.

The women said the argument between the men broke out shortly after Williams, Desrosiers, their children and a group of friends including Sterling returned to the 1700 block of 24th Street, where Steplight and Desrosiers lived, from Cypress Grove Park on Holden Avenue.

Desrosiers was asking Steplight to pay back the $500 he lent him, Williams said. The couple had recently been robbed and they were low on money, she said. Williams said Desrosiers treated Steplight “like family.” He and Desrosiers once built a fourwheeler together and were “really good friends,” she told detectives.

Williams described her fiancé as a “family man” who doesn’t go “looking for… trouble.” She said he tried to stop Steplight from punching him as they argued in the street.

But the fight turned violent when a family member of Desrosiers pulled out a gun and waved it around, Williams told deputies.

She claimed a friend of Steplight’s who was at the scene may have called two other men after seeing the weapon. No one else in their group had weapons, she said. Shortly after, a beige car pulled up and the passenger handed Steplight a gun, Williams said. She said he quickly started shooting.

“[H]e turned and looked at me the look in his eyes was like… he didn’t want to do it,” she told deputies.

Williams was shot in the leg and hand, and Sterling was shot in the chest and arm, according to the interviews. Desrosiers and a friend were also shot, according to deputies.

Steplight took off in the beige car, Williams said.

Her friends tied a tourniquet around her leg and arm and Desrosiers carried her to her Ford Explorer, she said. Sterling said her boyfriend, who was at the house but uninjured, drove to her a hospital.

Meanwhile, Desrosiers later told deputies he went back inside his house and retrieved a gun, then walked down the street to Corey Steplight’s house and fired inside, injuring Ruby Steplight’s 14-year-old granddaughter, an arrest affidavit said.

He said he killed 83-year-old Ruby Steplight after deciding the girl was “too young to die,” the affidavit shows.

As Desrosiers drove Williams to a hospital, Williams said he told her he had killed Ruby Steplight.

She told deputies she thought he was kidding.

“I didn’t think he really, that he really did it,” she said.