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East
Rodger Dale Allen East, 27, of Nederland, was indicted April 10 for aggravated assault of a family member with a weapon, stemming from an incident in October 2023 wherein he reportedly attacked his stepfather with an ax.
According to the probable cause affidavit for East’s arrest, the Nederland Police Department (NPD) was dispatched to Avenue E, where a victim advised that his stepson, East, threatened both himself and his wife with a hatchet.
The victim advised that East had been making suicidal and homicidal remarks over the past day and demanded to be brought to Port Arthur to retrieve a firearm. East had previously made multiple threats to harm his exgirlfriend and unborn child earlier that day, according to another NPD case report.
After telling his stepson he would not take him to Port Arthur, East retrieved an ax, entered the house and began to threaten his parents with the hatchet. Due to fear of what he may do, and in an effort to get him out of the house, the stepdad said he took East to Port Arthur, where he was later arrested by the Port Arthur Police Department for public intoxication.
Recorded calls from the Jefferson County jail later revealed a phone conversation where an individual remarked on how East pulled an ax on his parents. The jailed suspect replied by saying he only grabbed (the ax) to keep his stepdad from fighting him and threw it down telling him it was nothing personal. However, East claimed multiple times to police that he did not have a weapon.
In another recorded conversation, with a separate individual, East advised the individual to call his parents and tell them he did not mean to do what he did because he was tripping. He also asked the individual to call NPD and lie about being present at the time of the incident. Multiple phone calls were made to the same individual to convince them to give a statement saying that they were there when, in fact, they were not.