She admitted sending the “shoot up his s***” text but insisted that she never meant for anyone to get hurt.
WEST PALM BEACH — The murder trial of former Florida State University football player Travis Rudolph began Wednesday morning.
Attorneys for both sides presented opening statements, one casting Rudolph as the aggressor and the other insisting he was a victim. Rudolph, a former NFL player, is charged with murder and three counts of attempted murder in connection with a fatal shooting outside of his Lake Park home two years ago.
Four men appeared on Rudolph’s doorstep shortly after midnight onApril 7, 2021 to confront him about a dispute he had with his girlfriend hours earlier. The dispute turned violent, Rudolph said, and he armed himself with an AR-15.
Prosecutors said the men had already begun to drive away in a black Cadillac by the time Rudolph fired 39 rounds in their direction, killing Sebastien Jean-Jacques in the passenger seat.
Rudolph asked Circuit Judge Jeffrey Gillen to dismiss the case last year on the basis of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, which permits the use of deadly force to protect against death or great bodily harm. Gillen denied his request, leaving jurors to decide whether Rudolph ended Jean-Jacques’ life to save his own.
Second witness: Woman calls instruction to shoot Rudolph ‘horrible choice of words’
Dominique Jones, the woman Rudolph’s defense attorney blamed for instigating the fatal confrontation, said she and Rudolph played the card game UNO on the evening of April 7, 2021.
The loser ended each round by taking a shot of liquor. Jones said she was winning.
Rudolph left the bedroom momentarily, at which point Jones unlocked her boyfriend’s cellphone with the passcode he shared with her months earlier. She said she saw evidence of cheating — photos and texts between Rudolph and other women — that prompted her to begin gathering her belongings, intent on leaving.
Jones said Rudolph returned to the room and blocked the exit when he realized what she’d found. He moved out of her way only after she picked up a trophy and threatened to hit him with it, she said.
He followed her out of the home and taunted her, comparing her to other women and skewering her self-esteem. It made her furious, Jones said. She texted her brother: “Please go shoot his s*** up.”
When asked by Assistant State Attorney Francine Edwards whether she meant it, Jones’ answer was irrevocably “no.” Jones called the text a “horrible, horrible, horrible choice of words” that took on a much graver meaning the moment Rudolph killed Jean-Jacques.
She deleted the message. Investigators recovered it later when searching her phone.
First witness: Texts threatening Rudolph weren’t serious
Prosecutors’ first witness, 23-year-old Keishaun Jones, said he and three others arrived at Rudolph’s Lake Park home to demand answers and an apology from Rudolph — not to assault him.
Jones’ sister had accused Rudolph of throwing her to the ground after she discovered texts from another woman on his phone. Rudolph’s behavior angered his sister, Jones said, but she wasn’t serious when she texted him to “go shoot his s*** up.”
Jones told Assistant State Attorney Adrienne Ellis that he didn’t interpret the text literally. If he had, there would have been no knocking, no talking and no subsequent fist fighting in the yard, Jones said. There would have been only gunfire.
Instead, he knocked on the door and demanded that Rudolph open it. Jones, who is four years younger than Rudolph, said he brought three close friends with him to back him up, unsure if the former NFL player would try to hurt him, too.
Jones is a gun owner, but he said he left his weapon at home that night because he didn’t expect the confrontation to escalate. Defense attorney Heidi Perlet lobbed a series of rapid fire questions at him, each one more accusatory than the last.
“You weren’t there to talk,” she countered. “You were there to shoot him. Right?”
Jones shook his head. He wanted answers, he said. Not bloodshed.
Attorneys disagree over whether Rudolph was only person aiming gun
Perlet maintained that the opposite was true.
She said the only reason Rudolph was able to catch two men in his line of fire was because they were pointing their own guns back at him — not ducking in fear like prosecutors said, she told jurors.
It was their lives or Rudolph’s, Perlet said. Assistant State Attorney Richard Clausi Jr. said only one of the four men who confronted Rudolph was armed, but he never took the gun out of his pocket. Keishaun Jones agreed with prosecutors that he never saw Jean-Jacques or any one else in their car point a firearm; just Rudolph.
Investigators traced spent bullet casings to the former football player’s firearm only, Clausi said. Surveillance-camera footage captured muzzle flashes from Rudolph’s rifle alone, “killing Sebastien and almost killing three others.”
“He was not under attack,” the prosecutor said. “He was on the attack.”
Defense: Travis Rudolph’s girlfriend instigated attack
For each time Clausi called Rudolph the aggressor, Perlet pointed the finger elsewhere. She suggested Rudolph’s girlfriend was to blame for Jean-Jacques’ death during her opening statement to jurors.
She called Dominique Jones “a woman scorned” and said her jealousy set the night’s events into motion. Rudolph and Jones spent the evening sharing tequila and playing a card game in Rudolph’s bedroom before his girlfriend discovered texts on his phone from another woman.
“She became infuriated, enraged,” Perlet told the jury. “She lost her mind. She became unhinged.”
Jones used Rudolph’s phone to FaceTime a woman named Kayla, who Rudolph insisted was just a friend. Then she smashed his phone on the ground and hit him over the head with a football trophy, Perlet said, screaming all the while that she would send her brother to kill Rudolph.
A Ring doorbell camera recorded Jones as she stormed out of the house, beating Rudolph with her hands. He bent down to her ear and goaded her.
“Kayla has a better body than you,” Perlet said Rudolph told Jones. “She’s better looking than you.”
Jones left the home and told her brother, Keishaun Jones, that her boyfriend picked her up and slammed her against the ground twice — an accusation Rudolph denies. She texted her brother and another man who appeared on Rudolph’s doorstep later that night: “Please go shoot his s*** up.”
Defense: Travis Rudolph’s girlfriend instigated attack
For each time Clausi called Rudolph the aggressor, Perlet pointed the finger elsewhere. She suggested Rudolph’s girlfriend was to blame for Jean-Jacques’ death during her opening statement to jurors.
She called Dominique Jones “a woman scorned” and said her jealousy set the night’s events into motion. Rudolph and Jones spent the evening sharing tequila and playing a card game in Rudolph’s bedroom before his girlfriend discovered texts on his phone from another woman.
“She became infuriated, enraged,” Perlet told the jury. “She lost her mind. She became unhinged.”
Jones used Rudolph’s phone to FaceTime a woman named Kayla, who Rudolph insisted was just a friend. Then she smashed his phone on the ground and hit him over the head with a football trophy, Perlet said, screaming all the while that she would send her brother to kill Rudolph.
A Ring doorbell camera recorded Jones as she stormed out of the house, beating Rudolph with her hands. He bent down to her ear and goaded her.
“Kayla has a better body than you,” Perlet said Rudolph told Jones. “She’s better looking than you.”
Jones left the home and told her brother, Keishaun Jones, that her boyfriend picked her up and slammed her against the ground twice — an accusation Rudolph denies. She texted her brother and another man who appeared on Rudolph’s doorstep later that night: “Please go shoot his s*** up.”
Prosecutor: Travis Rudolph began shooting after fight ended
Clausi didn’t go into detail about the domestic dispute that prompted the fight but focused on the events that followed. He promised jurors they would see Ring doorbell footage of the men knocking on Rudolph’s door and demanding that he come outside. There were no weapons in any of their hands, Clausi said.
He said that what began as a verbal altercation devolved into a physical one in the front yard — explosive and over quickly. The men fought with one another until “the proverbial bell” rang, Clausi said, and they began urging one another back to their car. He said any threat of death or great bodily harm was over by the time Rudolph retrieved his gun from inside his home and started shooting.
Clausi braced the jury for evidence Rudolph’s defense team will use to depict Rudolph as the victim — including a threatening text from one of the young men who called Rudolph a “dead man walking” before arriving at his home.
The only person who fired a weapon was Rudolph, Clausi said. He ended his opening statement with the same German poet’s quote that he began it with.
Murder begins when self-defense ends.
Rudolph won acclaim for football career, viral photo with student
Rudolph signed with Florida State in 2014 as a five-star recruit from Cardinal Newman High School in West Palm Beach. He compiled more than 2,300 career receiving yards and scored 18 touchdowns in three seasons with the Seminoles before playing briefly in the NFL for the New York Giants in 2017.
He signed with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the Canadian Football League in December 2019 but did not appear in any games. The CFL canceled the 2020 season because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Winnipeg team announced that it released Rudolph from its roster following the news of his arrest in 2021.
Rudolph gained national attention during his time at FSU for a viral interaction he shared with an autistic middle-school student. Five FSU football players were visiting a middle school in Tallahassee in August 2016 when Rudolph saw student Bo Paske sitting by himself in the school’s lunch room. Rudolph sat at Bo’s table and the two ate together.
Someone took a photo of the moment and shared it with the student’s mother, who posted the image on Facebook. The post went viral. Travis later appeared with Bo and Bo’s mother on a segment for the “Fox and Friends” morning news TV show.
Rudolph’s father killed in accidental shooting in West Palm Beach four years before arrest
Rudolph’s father, Darryl Rudolph, was killed in an accidental shooting in April 2017 at a suburban West Palm Beach nightclub. Authorities said Paul Senat fired an AK-47-style rifle through a wall at Sugar Daddy’s Adult Cabaret, striking and killing Darryl Rudolph.
Senat told investigators he removed the weapon from a shelf and did not realize it had gone off until he saw the elder Rudolph, who worked as a handyman at the club, bleeding from the neck in the next room.
Senat, 40, was arrested on a charge of manslaughter. He later pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of culpable negligence and was credited with two days of jail time, records show.