Parole Denied For Tuscaloosa Man Serving Life Sentence For Murder, Rape

TUSCALOOSA, AL — The Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles has denied parole to a Tuscaloosa man serving a life sentence for rape and murder.

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Ellis Lamont Patton, who is being held at the Bullock Correctional Facility in Union Springs, avoided the death penalty in 2014 when he entered a guilty plea for raping two women and strangling 46-year-old Angela Quick Lavender to death at her University Manor apartment on Oct. 25, 2010.

He was given two consecutive life sentences with the possibility of parole.

Court documents obtained by Patch provide details of Patton strangling Lavender before raping her friend while forcing the woman’s eight-year-old daughter to stay in the room.

While Patton was initially charged with capital murder during the commission of a rape and robbery, first-degree rape and first-degree sodomy, he reached a plea agreement to a lesser charge of murder and a single count of rape.

The Tuscaloosa News reported that Lavender had dated Patton at one point but had told friends she was afraid of him after their relationship ended.

The night of the murder, Lavender asked a friend to stay with her and was also visited by Patton.

After eating dinner and going upstairs to sleep in a guest bedroom, Lavender's friend said that she was awakened in the early morning hours by Patton hitting her in the face and strangling her.

Patton reportedly told the woman’s daughter that he would kill her mother if she left the room, before apologizing to the woman for what had happened to Lavender and saying she had not cooperated.

He also took $400 from Lavender's friend.

Lavender died while being transported to DCH Regional Medical Center in Tuscaloosa, where investigators observed trauma to her face and neck, suggesting that she died from foul play.

Physical evidence obtained at the scene also indicated she had been sexually assaulted.

Patton then prompted a large-scale manhunt after driving to Florida and abandoning his truck in Jacksonville Beach.

From there, he convinced someone to give him a ride to Ohio but was extradited to Alabama after turning himself in to the Cleveland State University Police after two weeks on the run.

Lavender's friend eventually picked Patton out of a photo line-up as the man who had sexually assaulted her.

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