Suspect in boy’s death faces deadline in court

He gets till June 11 to opt for doctor

Little Rock man accused of killing a toddler in a December 2016 shooting must notify prosecutors by June 11 whether he will have his own expert testify at trial about his mental health, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Barry Sims ruled Monday.

Gary Eugene Holmes, 34, is presenting an insanity defense to charges of first-degree murder, committing a terroristic act and felon in possession of a firearm. He’s accused of firing a gunshot into a car carrying 3-year-old Acen Ahmeer King and killing the boy nearly two weeks before Christmas 2016.

State doctors have deemed Holmes competent for trial after a seven-month evaluation process. He was initially found unfit; doctors cited his long history of mental problems, which included a 2015 diagnosis — later retracted — that he had schizophrenia.

Holmes’ trial had been scheduled for February, but the proceedings were put on hold after defense attorney Ron Davis raised the mental-disease defense and asked for time to hire a doctor to evaluate his client’s mental health.

Sims set Holmes’ trial for Aug. 21, but also imposed the June deadline — the date of Holmes’ next court appearance — at the request of chief deputy prosecutor John Johnson. If Holmes’ defense will rely on his own doctor’s evaluation, the doctor’s findings must be disclosed to prosecutors by that date, the judge said.

Still to be resolved is a defense motion to suppress the statement Holmes gave police. His lawyer has challenged the legality of the interview with detectives, and prosecutors will have to prove that police respected Holmes’ rights when investigators questioned him after his arrest, about five days after the slaying.

Police say the boy, a backseat passenger in his grandmother’s car, was killed when someone fired a gun into the vehicle at Warren and Geyer Springs roads. Holmes told

investigators he was at that intersection with a gun that accidentally fired when he got out of his car to confront another driver.

Holmes said he’d taken the gun away from his passenger out of worry about what that man might do with it.

He told police that he didn’t realize he had the gun in his hand when he got out of the car and that he did not know the gun was loaded until it went off.

Investigators say the boy’s grandmother didn’t realize the boy had been shot in the chest until she arrived at a west Little Rock shopping center where she was meeting relatives.

She said she’d had an exchange with another driver at the southwest Little Rock intersection with both of them

honking at each other. The man then got out of the car and fired a gunshot, but the woman said she thought the man had fired into the air. The boy’s infant sister was also in the back seat but was not harmed.

Prosecutors say they have at least one witness who has described how Holmes got out of his car and took aim at the other vehicle before firing. Police said Holmes was angry because he thought the woman had been following him too closely. Holmes pulled over to let her car pass and then fired a pistol he’d been carrying in his lap, they said.