Plea deal set for teen sisters in LR slaying
Teenage sisters accused of killing a Little Rock man in April will plead guilty to first-degree murder in juvenile court after giving sworn statements on Thursday about how a 47-year-old father of four was fatally shot during a holdup that went wrong.
Ameija Hudson, 15, and Arlene Hudson, 14, of Little Rock had been charged as adults. But the sisters, in part because of their youth, have demonstrated they are good candidates for the rehabilitation services offered through the juvenile justice system, senior deputy prosecutor Barbara Mariani said. She said the sisters have done well in the education and therapy programs they have been enrolled in during their five months in custody.
The girls will be classified as extended juvenile-justice offenders, which will keep them under the supervision of authorities until they are 21. If they are found by a judge not to have been rehabilitated by then, they can be sentenced to prison. They will also serve at least three years on probation once they are released from supervision.
The girls were arrested three weeks after Derek Lamont Wilborn was found fatally wounded in the parking lot of Fair Oaks Apartments, 9600 W. 36th St., where the girls lived with their mother, Catrina Davis. Police learned the siblings’ names after investigators found on Wilborn’s phone the phone number of another girl who had been with the sisters when Wilborn was shot. That third girl identified the sisters for police.
The sisters testified Thursday before Circuit Judge Cathi Compton that the girl and Ameija Hudson had come up with the plan to rob Wilborn, which involved the girl getting Wilborn to come to the apartment complex. The girl was the connection to Wilborn, a registered sex offender who was on probation for child molestation, because she had gotten marijuana from Wilborn before and had smoked it with him.
The trio then got into Wilborn’s car under the pretext of buying drugs. When the three told Wilborn they didn’t have any money, Wilborn told the girl that he would give her marijuana for free if she performed oral sex on him. Wilborn then turned to Arlene Hudson and made the same offer, the sisters said.
Arlene Hudson told the judge that Wilborn’s proposition “triggered” her as a result of previous abuse she had suffered, so she drew her firearm.
“I upped my gun and we went to tussling over it and that’s when Ameija shot him,” she testified during questioning by her attorney, Julie Jackson.
Ameija Hudson also described the struggle for the judge under questioning by her lawyer, Alan Jones. She said she fired her gun when her sister called out to her.
“That’s when I shot him,” she testified.
Ameija Hudson said the trio ran away, but she realized she had left her phone, telling the judge that when she went back, Wilborn screamed at her to leave, saying he would tell police that two boys had shot him.
After police responded to the shooting, Wilborn was taken to a hospital, where he died.
Mariani, the prosecutor, said after the hearing that, in light of the sisters’ testimony, police would review the circumstances of Wilborn’s slaying to determine whether the other girl could be charged.
Court records show that Wilborn had been on probation since June 2022 after pleading guilty to second-degree sexual assault. Court records show a 5-year-old girl told her grandfather in December 2019 that a friend of her mother’s she knew only as Derek had performed oral sex on her while she pretended to be asleep in her home. Wilborn was arrested 10 months later.