Driver sentenced to 5 years for fatal crash

Woman who injured mother of six accepts negligent homicide plea bargain

A 25-year-old North Little Rock woman has accepted a five-year prison sentence for fatally injuring a married mother of six in a car crash in Sherwood.

Sentencing papers filed on Wednesday show Matison Lee Rice pleaded guilty to negligent homicide in exchange for the sentence imposed by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Leon Johnson. The Class B felony carries up to 20 years in prison.

Under the conditions of her plea agreement, negotiated by deputy prosecutor Melissa Brown and defense attorney Bill James, Rice will further serve a five-year suspended sentence after she gets out of prison.

Dezahn Niccole Whitmore, 33, was driving south on Arkansas 107 in Sherwood, on Sept 26, 2021, when she was struck head-on by Rice, who had been northbound on the highway in a white Kia Forte but crossed the centerline to crash into Whitmore’s vehicle just north of Aviator Drive in the Base Meadows subdivision.

The impact knocked the motor of Whitmore’s Chevrolet Trailblazer out of her sport utility vehicle and littered the road with auto parts, court filings show. Firefighters had to cut both women out of their vehicles. Rice had to be airlifted to the hospital for treatment while Whitmore, taken by ambulance, passed out on the trip and died shortly after arriving at the hospital.

Whitmore’s SUV was so heavily damaged, its “black box” could not be accessed but the box in Rice’s car showed she was traveling a little more than 75 mph, when she ran into Whitmore. Rice never hit the brakes and was accelerating when the cars collided.

Rice suffered a broken hip, brain bleeding and swelling of her spleen and liver. No drugs were found in Rice’s system at the hospital, which did not screen her for alcohol use. Investigators believed that Rice was intoxicated when she crashed into Whitmore.

The collision occurred about 7 a.m., and an analysis of Rice’s phone showed she had been at the Electric Cowboy, which closed at 5 a.m. the night before and into the early morning hours before the crash.

Videos found on her phone show she had been drinking alcohol shots there, and had been drinking at another nightclub the night before the crash.

Prosecutors also noted that videos showing Rice drinking and speeding were posted to the Facebook page of the AR Justice Project.