Conway murder suspect charged in earlier slaying

A Conway man charged with murder in a December shooting will face a second murder count in an earlier slaying, Faulkner County authorities announced Wednesday.

Authorities on Feb. 12 charged Mikael Yates, 19, with capital murder in the Oct. 11 killing of Bruce Radak, 26, a news release from the sheriff’s office states.

Yates has been held in the Faulkner County jail since he surrendered to police Dec. 20 and faces a capital murder charge in a fatal shooting that day. The victim, identified in an arrest affidavit as Gabe Paulk, died of his wounds a day later.

Radak’s death was initially considered a self-defense shooting, an affidavit states, until Kody Johnson, who shared a cell with Yates at the Faulkner County jail, said Yates bragged on Christmas Eve about getting away with shooting Radak.

In the initial investigation, Yates told authorities he heard someone moving around in a trailer belonging to his grandmother behind where he lives, the affidavit says. He got a gun, a .22-caliber AR-15-style rifle, and went out to confront the person, later identified as Radak, the affidavit says.

Yates told authorities he yelled at Radak to come out or he would shoot him, the affidavit says.

Yates said he went inside the trailer with his gun and flashlight and shot and killed Radak after Radak hit him with something, scratching him on the arm, the affidavit says.

Yates told police he did not know Radak, the affidavit states. Two people with Yates that night, one of whom was a minor, did not contradict Yates’ story.

However, Yates told Johnson that on Oct. 10 he agreed to let Radak borrow a tool and that Radak went to get the tool without asking on Oct. 11, the affidavit says.

Additionally, Radak’s wife told police that she didn’t know Yates or his twin brother, Elijah, but that one of the twins had threatened to shoot Radak on Sept. 2 when he told them to stop yelling in the backyard, the affidavit states. The same man threatened to shoot her dog, she told investigators.

On the night Radak was killed, she told police, he had been drinking vodka from the bottle outside her home, and she went inside and didn’t see him again.

She reported him missing the next morning after seeing police next door, she said.

Yates told Johnson he had been using methamphetamine the night of Radak’s death and heard Radak go into the trailer, Johnson told investigators.

Johnson is from Louisiana, was in jail during both of the shootings, and told investigators that he didn’t know Yates or any of the people involved in the two shootings prior to being placed in a cell with Yates, the affidavit states. Telling authorities was just the right thing to do, Johnson said.

None of the details about the shooting were public when Johnson spoke to investigators on Jan. 4, the affidavit notes, suggesting that only someone with an intimate knowledge of the killings could have shared them.

Yates got his AR-15, he told Johnson, and confronted Radak. Johnson thought Yates yelled at Radak to come out so he could shoot him, not to come out or else he would shoot him, he told an investigator.

When Yates entered the trailer, Radak never touched him, Johnson relayed to the investigator. Johnson said that a scratch on Yates’ arm was not from Radak attacking him.

“Yates was bragging about how he beat the police with a scratch,” the affidavit states when describing Johnson’s testimony.

Radak begged for his life before Yates shot him, Yates told Johnson. Other inmates heard the story, Johnson told investigators, but it would be difficult to convince them to make a statement.

Yates also talked about the killing of Paulk, Johnson told investigators.

A separate affidavit states that Yates told an investigator that on Dec. 20 he pulled up in the driveway at 515 U.S. 64 East, where Paulk lived with his girlfriend Kara Abbott, got out of the car with his pistol and fired all seven rounds at Paulk.

Deputies reported that Paulk had at least one bullet wound in the front of his body and four in the back, with one bullet striking him in the lower jaw.

Abbott’s son was with Yates just before the shooting, and when Abbott called Yates he was able to hear Paulk and started driving toward their house, the affidavit says.

Both Abbott and her son told investigators that Yates disliked Paulk, and Yates later said he thought Paulk abused Abbott and might eventually kill her, the affidavit states.

However, Paulk was not armed at the time and the two did not exchange any words before Yates opened fire, the affidavit states. There was no domestic dispute between Paulk and Abbott at the time of the shooting.

According to the affidavit, Yates told investigators he made the decision to kill Paulk as he pulled up in front of the house.

“He was mad and wanted to kill him today,” a sheriff’s office investigator wrote.

Yates told Johnson that Paulk hit him a few days before the killing, and that if he had had his gun then, he would have killed Paulk, the affidavit states.

Johnson said that Yates claimed Abbott asked him to kill Paulk and that in jail Yates had been upset because Abbott talked to police and did not protect him.

Johnson didn’t fully believe Yates’ claims that Abbott put him up to killing her boyfriend, he told deputies.

Yates told Johnson that the killings did not bother him at all, but that he regretted accidentally shooting Paulk in the face because it meant the family would have to have a closed-casket funeral, and Yates didn’t like that, Johnson told investigators.

Johnson started calling Yates “Jeffrey Dahmer,” he told investigators. Johnson doesn’t think that Yates was trying to act tough, and said he’s been to prison and never heard convicts talk like Yates did about the killings.

Yates also faces one count of residential burglary and four counts of theft of property, the release states.