Deal nets 15 years for rape, robbery

LR man pleads guilty in 2017 assault of girl, 2018 break-in

A 26-year-old Little Rock man has accepted a 15-year prison sentence for the rape of a 12-year-old girl and for participating in the home-invasion robbery of a 29-year-old man in incidents more than a year apart.

Sentencing papers filed Tuesday show Keyonte Jequan Buffington pleaded guilty to rape and no contest to charges of aggravated residential burglary, aggravated robbery, kidnapping, theft and second-degree battery in exchange for the 15-year sentence from Pulaski County Circuit Judge Leon Johnson.

Buffington has been in the Pulaski County jail since his November 2018 arrest, about 3½ months after three robbers forced their way into the Whitfield Street home of Terrell Dixon of Little Rock in August 2018.

Dixon told police the men beat him, both with their hands and with several unknown objects, and shot him at least six times with a BB gun in the arm, hand and face. The men held him against his will while they ransacked the home before fleeing with TVs, lawn equipment and some wheels and tires.

Detectives linked Buffington to the robbery about two weeks later after he pawned a TV and lawn mower, and police obtained security footage from the pawnshop of the transaction showing Buffington at the store, court files show.

Buffington was arrested after Dixon identified him from a photo lineup. The car Dixon described the robbers using also matched a 2010 Nissan Sentra that police had seen at Buffington’s home.

A DNA match by the state Crime Laboratory in February 2019 after Buffington had been in jail for about three months linked him to the rape of a 12-year-old Little Rock girl almost two years earlier, court filings show.

Buffington was charged after the girl picked him out of a police photo lineup, with detectives describing the then-13old girl as tearful and unable to speak after seeing Buffington’s photograph.

Court filings show that, in June 2017, the girl had shown up at the Centers for Youth and Family on Sixth Street, where she knew workers, and said she’d just been sexually assaulted by a man she met on the street, court filings show.

The girl said she encountered the man near 23rd and Gillman streets and he invited her into his home to watch TV. She told investigators he sexually assaulted her in the home then told her to leave because his mother would be home soon. She said she left and went to the center. She went to the hospital that same day for a rape exam where DNA was collected, court files state.

About 3½ months after identifying Buffington as her assailant, the girl was found shot to death in June 2019 in a home on Princeton Drive in Little Rock along with her cousin and another woman. The girl had turned 14 about a week earlier.

Police arrested a suspect, parolee Terrence Deshawn Price of Little Rock, at a nearby home on West 16th Street about 15 minutes after the bodies were discovered.

Charged with capital murder, Price, 43, is imprisoned awaiting trial.