A Washington Parish judge sentenced Tauj Taplin and Quardaviaon White to life in prison for a 2021 Bogalusa killing.

Second-degree murder in Louisiana carries a mandatory life term, so Tuesday's hearing was the court imposing the sentence the statute requires after the Oct. 2 verdicts. The district attorney's account names Taplin as the shooter and White as the driver, and it does not name the man who died. Arrest coverage from 2021 did, and the spellings of White's name do not match across those years.

Judge Alan A. Zaunbrecher on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026, sentenced Tauj Taplin and Quardaviaon White to life in prison without the possibility of parole, probation or suspension of sentence, the 22nd Judicial District Attorney's Office said. Taplin, 24, is of Amite, Louisiana. White, 24, is of McComb, Mississippi. A jury convicted both of second-degree murder on Oct. 2 after a five-day trial, the office said. WBRZ and WGNO reported the same sentences and the same Oct. 2 verdicts. WBRZ reported the hearing was in Washington Parish court in Franklinton. Assistant District Attorneys Tiffany Dover and Iain Dover handled the sentencing and tried the case, the office said. The Bogalusa Police Department investigated.

The convictions come from a shooting on June 7, 2021, at an apartment on Union Square in Bogalusa, the district attorney's office said. Officers found a man with multiple gunshot wounds and took him to Our Lady of Angels Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The Oct. 20 release does not name him. NOLA.com, reporting the Oct. 2 verdict, said the district attorney's office did not name the victim in that announcement either. KPLC and WWL-TV, reporting the arrests in June 2021 and citing Bogalusa police, identified the man who was killed as Michael Brock, 19, of the Kentwood area. Those 2021 accounts and Tuesday's release describe the same date, the same apartment complex, and the same two defendants in the same roles. This story uses Brock's name only as those 2021 police accounts reported it.

The district attorney's office said investigators decided the shooting grew out of ongoing threats by local rap figures, that Taplin was the shooter, and that White drove the getaway vehicle. Trial evidence, including cell phone and other digital records, placed both men at the scene, the office said. After warrants were issued, the Chambers County Sheriff's Office in Texas and the Louisiana State Police took both into custody on June 10, 2021, following a vehicle stop and a brief flight, the office said. Search warrants then turned up two handguns, including one reported stolen out of Baton Rouge. KPLC's 2021 account, citing Detective Captain David Miller, said White was taken at that stop and that Taplin fled in the car and was later arrested near Lake Charles. The district attorney's shorter account of a stop and a brief flight is the 2026 version. The 2021 account is what police said at the time of the arrests.

The names and the weapon are not written the same way in every account. The 2026 release spells the driver Quardaviaon White and says Taplin lives in Amite. KPLC in 2021 spelled him Quardavion Tyvon White, spelled the other man Tauj Chardez Taplin, and said Taplin, then 19, was of Kentwood. KPLC, citing Bogalusa police, also said the shooter fired an AR-15 when Brock opened the apartment door. Tuesday's release describes two handguns recovered after the arrests. An arrest-time description of a rifle and a sentencing release about handguns found later are not the same fact, and this story does not merge them. What the jury decided, and what the judge imposed, is second-degree murder and a mandatory life term for each man.

Zaunbrecher handed down the sentences with the victim's family in the courtroom, the district attorney's office said. "While no sentence can undo the tragic loss of a loved one, today's finality ensures that these two individuals will spend the rest of their natural lives behind bars for a senseless act of violence driven by a mindless online rivalry," Sims said. WBRZ reported the same quotation. The life terms are the judgment on the second-degree murder convictions. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.