Homeless man given 20 years for stabbing

A homeless man on parole who stabbed another man to death outside the Jericho Way homeless day resource center has accepted a 20-year prison sentence for the slaying and an unrelated Dollar General robbery that occurred about three weeks before the killing.

Sentencing papers filed Monday show Roderick Damon Mills, 31, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, reduced from first-degree murder, robbery and terroristic threatening in exchange for the 20-year term imposed by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Leon Johnson.

Mills was arrested three days after police found Nicky Lynn Anthony fatally injured in March 2019 at Nehemiah House, the substance-abuse recovery program operated by Union Rescue Mission at 2921 Springer Blvd.in March 2019.

The 58-year-old Little Rock man had walked up to the front door about an hour before sunset and collapsed. He had been stabbed in the neck.

A trail of blood led police to a shed in the Jericho Way parking lot across the street at 3000 Springer. Inside was a bloody blanket and Norman Seago, 72, who said he witnessed the attack on Anthony.

Seago said he and Anthony had been sharing the shed for several weeks but that he did not know Anthony’s assailant. Anthony called him “Smokey,” Seago told investigators, describing how an angry Smokey had accused Anthony of stealing his knife.

Laying on the floor, Anthony pulled a pocket knife out and offered it to Smokey, who took it, yelled at Anthony then stabbed him before running away with the knife, court files show. Anthony, bleeding heavily, got up and walked over to Nehemiah House to get help, Seago said.

Jericho Way employee Jeremy Rucker showed detectives the facility’s security video, which depicts a man walking out of the woods from the south side and entering the shed. The recording further shows the man with a knife standing over another man laying inside the shed then making a single downward motion on top of the reclining man before returning to the woods.

Rucker, 33, told detectives he recognized the man with the knife as Mills, saying he was familiar with him because he frequents the area and has caused “disturbances” there before, court filings show.

Mills, who was known to police, looked like the man in the video, and Seago picked his photograph out of a picture lineup as the man he saw attack Anthony, according to court files.

Police got an arrest warrant that night with detectives launching a manhunt that took them to other locations Mills had been known to frequent, including nearby homeless camps.

Meanwhile, another detective thought Mills looked like a shoplifter who had robbed the Dollar General at 4748 Springer in February 2019.

The clerk at the store, 32-year-old Austin Calahan, recognized Mills as a thief who had threatened to kill him when Calahan confronted him about stealing some frozen chicken, court files show. Calahan’s identification allowed police to charge Mills with robbery and terroristic threatening.

A tip to police that Mills was on a bus resulted in his arrest.

Records show that Mills was on parole for 20-year prison sentence for robbery and theft following a February 2009 carjacking attempt in Little Rock that was thwarted when Mills could not get the car started, court records show. He was approved for parole in January 2018, records state.