INVESTIGATIVE: One stalking victim's mother speaks after man kills woman, sets himself on fire
BATON ROUGE -- A man with a history of stalking and violating protective orders was able to get out on a $2,500 bond after allegedly beating his most recent girlfriend. A week later, Baton Rouge police say he killed her.
BRPD says Steven Heinrich, 28, stabbed Stasy Charles, 23, to death in the parking lot of her Old Hammond Highway apartment complex Thursday morning.
Heinrich then intentionally crashed his car and lit himself on fire. He died Friday afternoon.
The mother of one of his previous stalking victims, Dominique Ramkaran, says Charles' death should have been prevented.
"Y'all are not going to do anything until someone dies, and look what happened."
Ramkaran, who lives in the same New York town as Heinrich, knows him well. He and her daughter went on a couple of dates in 2023 and since then, she says her family's life has been a nightmare.
"A year and a half you harassed and stalked my daughter. A year and a half, you have tortured us."
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She says when her daughter no longer wanted to see Heinrich, he began constantly harassing her, her daughter's friends and other family members to the tune of hundreds of calls and messages a day, often from fake numbers.
"To the point my phone is on 'do not disturb'. If you're not in my favorites, you cannot reach me."
Ramkaran says the local police didn't do anything about it until she got restraining orders against him, which he was arrested for violating. He, however, never served jail time.
"After he violated the protective order numerous times, they gave him probation."
At some point, he came down to Louisiana and began dating Charles. Ramkaran says her daughter's friends tried to warn her.
"[Her friend] reached out to the young lady, like 'Leave this man alone. He's crazy. He's going to stalk you. He did it to my friend.' She didn't believe us."
Soon after that, Heinrich was arrested for allegedly beating Charles. Commissioner Kina Kimble gave him a $2500 bond and a restraining order. That was just one week before the stabbing.
"So, how does a man who has a flipping assault, harassment, probation, warrants, was able to slip through the system, get a $2,500 bail and go back to the same woman and kill her?"
The WBRZ Investigative Unit has learned that at that hearing, the state did not have his complete criminal history, but did tell Commissioner Kimble he had been arrested for violating a protective order in the past year.
"The system failed both of these young ladies. It failed every young lady in the path of this man. He was supposed to be in jail."
According to BRPD, Heinrich had restraining orders against him from six separate women out of state.
It's unclear why the DA's office was unable to find those orders, which, according to BRPD, are listed in a database both offices have access to.