Youngest victim in ’17 LR club shooting sues rapper, 3 others
The youngest victim in last year’s downtown Little Rock club shooting — a 16-year-old boy paralyzed by a gunshot through the spine as he attended a late-night rap concert — is suing the Memphis performer, the performer’s two bodyguards, and the Conway man who police say started the gunfire that resulted in 28 people being injured.
The suit against the Memphis trio — Ricky L. Hampton, 26, who performs under the name Finese 2 Tymes; bodyguards Kentrell Dominique “Dirt” Gwynn, 25, and Cordero Ragland, 26; and Tyler Clay Jackson, 19, of Conway asks Pulaski County Circuit Judge Alice Gray for a jury trial to determine punitive and compensatory damages.
The four defendants, all reportedly indigent, are jailed on charges arising from the investigation into the shootings at the Power Ultra Lounge.
Marquette Muhammad, now 17, was among the crowd inside the club attending Hampton’s performance when the late-night gunfire started, leading to a shootout between Little Rock’s Crips and Bloods factions, police have said.
At least 13 guns were fired in the club that night. No one died, and authorities credited the lack of deaths to the firstaid equipment Little Rock police were carrying. The club, at West Sixth and Center streets, was also about a halfmile from one of the city’s largest fire and ambulance stations.
The lawsuit was filed by
the teen’s mother, 35-year-old Mecca Muhammad, on his behalf. They are being represented by Little Rock attorney Denise Reid Hoggard with the Rainwater, Holt & Sexton firm. It’s the second suit to be filed in the shooting.
The first lawsuit, filed by a club goer shot in the arm as he celebrated his 29th birthday, was filed against the club owners two months after the shooting. It was dropped in October, but the plaintiff, Patrick Dwight Hardy, has an option to refile it.
Mecca Muhammad is an older sister of Darren McFadden, the 30-year-old former Arkansas Razorbacks standout who ended his 10-year NFL career last year after three seasons with the Dallas Cowboys.
McFadden of Little Rock was at the club immediately after the shootings looking for his relatives. One of McFadden’s brothers, 36-yearold Wallace Muhammad, and another nephew, Marvell Harris, who was wounded,
were at the club.
The lawsuit says Marquette Muhammad is entitled to compensation for the medical expenses he has incurred, plus future costs, as well as for his pain and emotional distress. As a crime victim, he is also entitled to punitive damages, the lawsuit says.
The seven-page suit was filed Friday, just before the one-year statute of limitations in the case expires today.
Within days of the Power Ultra Lounge shooting, Gov. Asa Hutchinson established an anti-violence task force that drew local, state and federal law enforcement and prosecutors together to focus on the resurgence of gang violence in Little Rock.
The Power Ultra Lounge shooting echoes the gang violence that plagued the city in the 1990s, as showcased in the 1994 documentary Gang War: Bangin’ in Little Rock.
The parallels became even more pronounced with the revelation that Kevin Myron “Crip Moe” Johnson was at the Power Ultra Lounge during the shooting. Authorities said Johnson, 50, was working as a bouncer at the club and seized for police a gun that was used in the melee.
Johnson is said to have established the Crips in Little Rock in the early 90s. Also known as L.A. Moe and Latif Mohammed, he was featured in the documentary and became, for a while, one of Little Rock’s most notorious gang members, even after he said he’d disavowed gang violence.
According to court records, police reports and law-enforcement testimony disclosed over the past year, Tyler Jackson, who said he was egged on by some gang-member friends, fired the first shot, aiming at a rival gang member he said had just pulled a gun on one of his friends.
Jackson said he was at Power Ultra Lounge with several friends, among them Machita “Frog” Mitchell Jr., 41, Kenwan “Booman” Sherrod,
21, and Jaylyn Griffis, 22, according to reports.
None of the three have been charged in the Power Ultra Lounge shooting. Mitchell and Sherrod are currently under federal indictment on marijuana trafficking charges and are charged in state court with bribery.
Griffis, Sherrod and Mitchell were all armed, Jackson told police. He said Mitchell gave him a 10mm pistol because “they may see some people in the club they do not like.”
Jackson and his friends reportedly had started talking about how someone in the rival gang had been running down Jackson’s deceased brother.
As the men were talking, Jackson said, Sherrod began using Crips gang signs and bumping him with his shoulder, while his friends urged him to take a shot at 24-yearold Marvell “Mook” Harris of Little Rock, according to reports. Harris is Marquette McFadden’s cousin.
Jackson told police that he saw Harris arguing with Mitchell and another person. Harris pulled up his shirt to show that he had a pistol in his waistband, Jackson said. Harris then pulled the gun, so Jackson shot at him, Jackson told investigators.
Jackson said he saw a man with Harris fall to the ground, but he didn’t know whether his shot had struck the man or not.
Jackson told police that he fired his gun about 10 times before jumping behind a couch as more people started shooting. Jackson said Sherrod also tried to open fire during the melee but his gun jammed.
Jackson said he lost his gun somehow during the melee and ran out of the club, eventually walking to his aunt’s house in southwest Little Rock. Police said the gun was seized by Johnson, who turned it over to investigators.
One witness told police he was sitting on a couch in the club next to a young man, likely a teenager, who stood up and started shooting directly across the room. The young man fired four or five shots then stopped and leaned forward before starting to shoot again, the witness said.
Jackson was the second person arrested in the case. He is charged with 10 counts of aggravated assault and two counts of second-degree battery, accused of wounding Harris and Muhammad.
Gwynn, who was arrested first, is charged with 10 counts of aggravated assault.
Ragland is charged with five counts of aggravated assault plus one count each of evidence tampering and being a felon in possession of a firearm.
Hampton is charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm.
Jackson told police that he fired his gun about 10 times before jumping behind a couch as more people started shooting. Jackson said Sherrod also tried to open fire during the melee but his gun jammed.