Rideshare driver accused of raping, murdering passenger and dumping body

Posted at 11:32 AM, September 12, 2024

INDIANAPOLIS (Court TV/Scripps News Indianapolis) — An Uber driver in Indianapolis is accused of sexually assaulting and murdering a passenger, then dumping their body.

Photo of Chanti Dixon

An Uber driver is charged with murdering Chanti Dixon. (Family photo via Scripps News Indianapolis)

Francisco Valadez, 29, was arrested and charged with murder the day after the body of 30-year-old Chanti Dixon was found outside a home on the city’s southeast side. Dixon had been reported missing earlier in the day after her mother said she took an Uber home from work. Dixon was never heard from again.

Investigators say that Valadez told them a number of different stories, first saying that when he dropped Dixon off she was robbed by a man with a gun, who shot her in the thigh. Eventually, police say Valadez admitted to shooting Dixon in the back of the head because she laughed at his small penis, making him mad, while he was trying to have sex with her.

Valadez allegedly told officers that after he shot Dixon, he dragged her body behind a concrete barrier and tried to have sex with her body again.

“This is disgusting,” Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Chief Chris Bailey told Scripps News Indianapolis. “It’s disturbing. No one deserves to be treated this way in our community.”

When police talked to Valadez’s mother, she confirmed that he carries a gun.

“I keep waiting for her to walk through that door. But I know she won’t,” Dixon’s mother, Rise Dixon, told Scripps News Indianapolis. “For people out there that’s doing stuff like that man did to my child, because you picked up a stripper at work and thought that no one would care, we do, and you can’t do that. … Don’t let what happened to her diminish what she put out in the world.”