Madison County man surrenders to officers

Then a resident of Mulberry, Garrett was accused in the April 1996 fatal shooting of Joe Don Stephenson, 35, of Chester.

A Madison County man being sought on charges of threatening at gunpoint to kill another man surrendered Wednesday at the Crawford County sheriff’s office in Van Buren.

Madison County Sheriff Rick Evans sent a deputy to pick up Teral Garrett, 59, who was charged Monday in Madison County Circuit Court with aggravated assault, first-degree terroristic threatening and being a felon in possession of a firearm after having been convicted of murder — all felonies.

Crawford County Sheriff Ron Brown said a friend drove Garrett to the sheriff’s office about 10:30 a.m. Wednesday and Garrett walked into the lobby. Garrett told a deputy that his friend saw on television that Garrett was wanted in Madison County for something — Garrett said he didn’t know for what — and that he wanted to surrender, Brown said.

Brown said the Madison County sheriff was notified, and Garrett was held until the deputy arrived to take him to jail in Huntsville.

Garrett was charged after a neighbor reported that Garrett pointed a shotgun at him Sunday and threatened to kill him. When deputies arrived at the rural location, the neighbor, Jeffery Pearson, told them that he saw Garrett enter a cabin on the property.

Garrett was not in the cabin and had fled into the woods. Evans said a deputy, an Arkansas State Police trooper, a Huntsville police officer and a K-9 team searched for Garrett that night without locating him.

Pearson had left the area Sunday night for his own safety but returned Monday morning to find that Garrett’s cabin had burned, according to the Madison County sheriff’s office.

Evans said deputies continued to patrol the roadways Monday and Tuesday looking for Garrett. There were one or two reported sightings of Garrett by the public, but the sightings were not substantiated, Evans said.

Court records show Garrett was convicted of second-degree murder in 1997 in Franklin County and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Then a resident of Mulberry, Garrett was accused in the April 1996 fatal shooting of Joe Don Stephenson, 35, of Chester during an argument in a rural area north of Ozark. Both men were drunk at the time, authorities said.

Garrett also was the subject of a manhunt in wooded rural Franklin County, according to a 1996 news account.

Stephenson was shot once in the face, and his body was found in a roadside ditch on Arkansas 215. Garrett’s pickup was found burned about 14 miles from the body. In Garrett’s April 1997 trial, the state contended that Garrett was trying to hide his guilt by burning the pickup.

Garrett testified during the trial that Stephenson shot himself.