‘Didn’t mean to kill,’ boy says, but judge orders trial as adult

A 15-year-old North Little Rock boy has been ordered to stand trial as an adult after testifying about how he came to fatally shoot a cemetery worker nearly a year ago.

Pulaski County Circuit Judge Leon Johnson capped an eight-hour hearing Friday on a request by Kelton Ahmad McIntire to transfer his first-degree murder charge to juvenile court, even under a provision of the law that would keep him in custody until age 21.

Johnson actually heard McIntire twice describe the February shooting of 33-yearold Kristopher Bradley Dacus in the Edgewood Memorial Park cemetery on Division Street. The first time, McIntire was questioned in open court as the teen recounted his version of events for his lawyer, testifying by video from the Pulaski County jail.

The second time was when prosecutors Whitney Ohlhausen and Melissa Brown played McIntire’s recorded police interview, conducted a couple of hours after the slaying, as they urged the judge to keep McIntire in adult court.

In making his decision, the judge noted that McIntire’s

story did not match the accounts of three witnesses who police say saw the shooting. McIntire told the judge that he fired his gun while they were close together, after the older man had grabbed him, apparently intent on holding him for the police.

Those witnesses, two other cemetery workers and a friend of McIntire’s, told authorities they heard a shot while the pair were close together, Dacus and McIntire then separated — because one or the other had stepped back — and then McIntire fired again, possibly twice, detective Michael Gibbons told the judge. Dacus suffered gunshot wounds in his buttocks, stomach and left upper arm, Gibbons testified.

The 60-acre, 98-year-old cemetery holds a shortcut, popular for at least 40 years, in the Camp Robinson Road neighborhood. Gibbons said the graveyard had been plagued by vandalism in the weeks before the fatal confrontation, and that Dacus had gone to confront McIntire when he said saw the teen and three others cutting through the cemetery.

McIntire told the judge he and his friends had been buying snacks and tobacco nearby. He said he was the youngest of the four, having just turned 15 about 2½ weeks earlier. He said he’d skipped school and was carrying a gun, even though he knew it was wrong.

When the friends heard someone shouting at them, and saw an angry man quickly approaching, his friends ran for the fence. McIntire testified that he turned back, wanting to tell the man they had not done anything wrong. McIntire said he could see the man was unarmed.

“It got physical,” he said, telling the judge how the man had grabbed his jacket collar. “I really couldn’t tell you what I was thinking. I felt my mind was racing.”

McIntire said he wanted the man to let him go so he pulled his pistol out of his left front pants pocket to warn the man but somehow ended up firing the gun. The weapon was a distinctive purple and black 9mm that he had bought for $150 a couple of months earlier and had taken to carrying for protection, although he said he’d never fired it before.

“I know guns scare people,” McIntire testified. “I was really trying to get him to let me go. I didn’t mean to kill him.”

McIntire said he feels terrible about Dacus’ death and that he did not intend to kill him. McIntire said he was only trying to protect himself.

“I didn’t want him to die,” he testified. “He didn’t deserve it.”

McIntire said he and his friends ran off when Dacus fell, and police caught up to them about two hours later at Parkway Crossing apartments, about a block from the cemetery, where McIntire had been staying with his aunt. He’s been jailed ever since.

Defense attorney Michael Kaiser told the judge that the teen was a victim of a generational cycle of poverty and drug abuse and has barely had a stable moment in his life. McIntire, diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, thrives in a structured environment but seldom experienced one, the attorney said.

McIntire told the judge that he’s been let down by almost everyone in his family and has learned to expect disappointment in life.

McIntire’s grandmother, Charlotte Grimes, 63, testified about how her addictions caused her to neglect her daughter as a child. Her daughter, McIntire’s mother, Virginia Sherre Phillips, 40, said she had been similarly neglectful of McIntire, the youngest of her three children, because she was either locked up, struggling with addictions or trying to provide for her family.

Phillips said she was in Georgia when McIntire was arrested, looking for a job and a place to start over away from bad influences in North Little Rock. Phillips said she had left McIntire with Grimes, but the teen had not liked the woman’s rules so had gone to stay with Phillips’ sister, Tiffany Grimes.

McIntire’s half brother Kendrick Sisa, 22, also told the judge that he had not set a good example for his younger brother, describing how he stole from McIntire to get money and smoked marijuana around him before going to prison at age 19 on theft and fleeing convictions. He was locked up when his brother was arrested and paroled in August.

McIntire’s father, who is on parole for a 30-year prison sentence delivered in 2008, told the judge he had barely seen his son because he spent most of the first 10 years of McIntire’s life in prison.

Eric Lashann McIntire, 42, of Memphis, told that when he was paroled in 2015 he moved to Tennessee to get away from bad influences. He said he got a job, bought a house and has established a family there.

He testified that while he’s committed to being a good, supportive father, the two are still working on their relationship. If he’d had his way, his son would have gone to live with him and his fiancee but the teen was resistant and things didn’t work out, he testified.

Kelton McIntire’s thirdgrade special-education teacher Kadi Lindsey told the judge that the teen had been a “wonderful” student “so eager to learn” when he put his mind to it, although he was easily distracted and had no one to look up to for guidance.

“Such a good person … so much potential” and one of her most favorite students ever, she told the judge, begging him to give the teen another chance.