In August 2025, a woman named Allison, who was pregnant, and her young son, six-year-old Zach, were brutally attacked by a man carrying a hammer outside the Riverbend Apartments in Cranston, Rhode Island. Neighbors rushed to help as the victims bled heavily from severe head and facial injuries. Allison suffered a fractured nose and was treated at the Rhode Island Hospital. Her unborn baby was unharmed. Zach underwent surgery for a fractured skull and remained in the pediatric ICU of Hasbro Children’s Hospital with a brain bruise, facing a long recovery.
Police bodycam footage uploaded by Deep Dive BodyCam captures the police officers arriving at the scene after multiple neighbors called 911. The neighbors were visibly shaken seeing the mother and child bleeding outside.
The responding officer tried to calm down the crowd. The mother’s clothes were soaked in blood, and her scared child was sitting beside her on a bench. She claimed her attacker’s name was Zachary. Fearing the attacker could have mingled with the crowd, he urged the neighbors to keep their hands out of their pockets. One lady who claimed to have helped the lady and her child narrated what really went down.
“I’ll tell you what’s going on,” she said. “We came outside on our way leaving, [and] I heard this lady over here screaming for help. We ran over here, and she’s leaking. She said somebody [had] hammered her in the head with her son. She said he lives in one of the buildings.”
While paramedics rushed the victims to the hospital, police focused on securing the area. Neighbors could not identify Zachary. However, they pointed to Building J, saying the suspect was hiding inside. Officers quickly set up a perimeter around the building. At the time, police did not know who the suspect was.
At one point during the search, police suspected the neighbors knew who the perpetrator was. They were protecting him by not revealing his identity. Officers searched Building J and encountered 28-year-old Rashad Talley in a hallway. The way he interacted with the officers and refused to look them in the eye raised suspicion that he was behind the attack.
He appeared cooperative at first. He claimed he had no weapon but a knife with him. When an officer asked whether he was outside when the attack took place, he answered affirmatively. Talley simply replied, “Of course,” when the officer asked, “Did you do it?” Rhode Island police officers were shocked by his lack of remorse. He joked and chatted with the cops as he was being taken to the police car after being put on handcuffs.
“…taking walks are good. Burning calories all help. I left (the hammer) in the road or something. I don’t know. Not in the house.” He did not give a straight answer when the officer asked for his real name. “It’s a bunch of aliases. You can call me whatever you want,” he said.
Talley then mocked the officer when he said, “I’ll just take your fingerprints and find your real name if you want to be a wise guy.” Allison, who was sitting in the ambulance, recognized Rashad as the attacker.
“I don’t usually smoke drugs. I don’t smoke tobacco, [but] a little bit of weed. Never drink alcohol, but that’s always that,” Talley answered when asked whether he was under the influence. Once Talley was in custody, police talked to eyewitnesses to figure out the timeline. They discovered that there was no argument and no motive involved. It was a completely random attack.
Eyewitnesses recalled the suspect acting completely nonchalant. He tried to blend back into normal life right after committing the violence. “I was walking when I saw a guy hitting a kid and his mom,” one eyewitness recalled.
He claimed that the mother-son duo was walking when a man silently walked up behind them. The three kept walking together. Without any warning, argument, or obvious motive, the man pulled out a hammer and repeatedly hit both the mother and child in the head. Talley was arrested immediately and charged with assault with a dangerous weapon, as well as assault and battery on a child under 10, causing serious bodily injury. His court appearance is scheduled for November.
Disclaimer: The Inquisitr could not independently confirm the facts of this incident and is reporting based on the information available within the public video record.
