Gunfire at school precedes 4 arrests
1 teen detained in Aug. 19 case
Police say they arrested the teenage target of gunfire outside Chicot Elementary in southwest Little Rock on Tuesday, as well as two men accused of shooting at him.
Josiah Stewart, 16, told police that the men were shooting at him, but he was arrested in connection with a separate shooting in August, according to a police report.
Stewart, a resident of the Whispering Hills Mobile Home Park at 11500 Chicot Road, identified Kortez “KP” Parker, 18, and Clifton Shelton, 18, along with a third man he did not recognize as the gunmen who shot at him outside the school, according to police reports.
Authorities said six bullets struck at least two buildings on the 13-acre campus at 111000 Chicot Road.
Police reports show that the six Little Rock officers who responded to the shotsfired call just before 10 a.m. Tuesday — Tamera Humphrey, Michael Mumert, Troy Gonzalez, Alejandra Galvin, Kajuan Watson and Greg Quiller — had Parker, Shelton and a third man, Ledarius Deshun Williams, 20, in custody less than 20 minutes after the school went into lockdown.
Witnesses directed officers to follow subjects who ran south toward the 28-acre Whispering Hills Mobile Home Park, according to police reports.
Parker, Shelton and Williams were arrested together at Parker’s 7407 Royal
Oaks Drive home, less than a mile from the school. A teenager who was with the suspects was questioned but released without being charged.
No one was injured in the shooting, but police said school workers 54-year-old Jamie Washington and 36-yearold Joshua Richmond were also fired upon.
The school was locked down in keeping with the school’s emergency protocol, and the children were kept inside for the rest of the day as a precaution.
Police charged Shelton and Williams with aggravated assault, possession of a firearm on school property and 10 counts of committing a terroristic act. Williams told police that he was at the school with a gun but that someone else did the shooting, reports show.
Parker was charged with misdemeanor marijuana possession and simultaneous possession of drugs and firearms, a felony, after police found 3 ounces of marijuana, a pistol and “multiple magazines and extended magazines” in his bedroom, an arrest report said.
The three were arraigned Wednesday before Little Rock District Judge Hugh Finkelstein, who set bail at $200,000 for Parker, $500,000 for Shelton and $250,000 for Williams.
Stewart appeared before Finkelstein alongside his reported attackers. He was charged as an adult and taken into custody on charges of first-degree battery, committing a terroristic act and being a felon in possession of a firearm over accusations that he was involved in the shooting of one of his neighbors in the mobile home park six weeks ago.
Finkelstein set Stewart’s bail at $50,000, and all four remained in custody Wednesday afternoon.
In the Aug. 19 shooting, 63-year-old Marion Alfred Lovell was wounded in both legs in front of his trailer about 8:30 a.m. Witnesses identified two teenagers, one of them firing a gun, who ran from the scene, the report states.
A man visiting Lovell, 39-year-old Timothy Baker, told police that he was in Lovell’s trailer when he heard shots and looked outside.
Baker said he saw the older man lying on the ground and that Lovell called out for Baker to pull him back into the trailer, which Baker said he tried to do, the report said.
Police did not say whether Lovell’s shooting could be related to the school shooting.
Court records show that Parker, Shelton and Williams have all had run-ins with the law before.
Parker was just sentenced to five years on probation in June after spending about a year in a juvenile lockup as part of his June 2016 guilty plea to robbery and felony theft charges. The charges stem from the armed robbery Parker committed on Aug. 14, 2016, in which he pretended to be selling an iPhone over the Internet, court filings show.
Parker, who was 15 at the time, met with an interested buyer, 39-year-old Jason Thompson, and took the older man’s money at gunpoint. Parker was arrested about two weeks later.
In July, Williams was identified to police as one of the three gunmen who shot up homes on Wolfe Street and Sanford Drive in drive-by shootings carried out over the span of less than 24 hours in June, but he was never charged, police reports show. Officers arrested two other Little Rock men in the gunplay: 18-year-old Joshua Jordan and 21-year-old Wesley Oneal Kirkpatrick.
Prosecutors later dropped the charges against Jordan, leaving Kirkpatrick the sole defendant on charges of eight counts of unlawful discharge of a firearm and two counts of committing a terroristic act and a charge of fleeing.
In September 2017, Shelton, then 17, was one of two teenagers arrested on commercial burglary charges over accusations that they broke into Cloverdale Middle School, at 6300 Hinkson Road, and stole some computer equipment.
Shelton was charged as an adult, but the case was transferred to juvenile court earlier this year while Shelton’s co-defendant, 21-year-old Xavier Canady, pleaded guilty in November in exchange for six years on probation.