DORSET, Vermont — Two years ago, law enforcement discovered Isaiah Rodriguez’s body along a snow-covered dirt road in southwestern Vermont, over a hundred miles away from his hometown of Springfield, Massachusetts. He was wearing slide sandals, and he had been shot over three dozen times.
He was 17, three days shy of his birthday.
In recent months, law enforcement has charged a half-dozen people in connection with the teen’s killing. As to why Rodriguez ended up on a rural road in the Green Mountain State, documents filed in Vermont courts show investigators focused their inquiry on the illicit drug trade between Western Massachusetts and Vermont.
