Woman testifies on boyfriend’s 2019 slaying at LR restaurant

Krystal Rena White said she knew there was trouble brewing when the Little Rock pizza restaurant worker tossed her bread sticks on the counter, knocking the marinara sauce to the floor before greeting her boyfriend with profanity and a racial slur.

But White, 36, said she never expected that within minutes she’d watch her boyfriend, 33-year-old Marcus Dominique Fleming, die in the Little Caesars Pizza parking lot, gunned down by that worker, who had unleashed a 14-bullet salvo on Fleming inside the restaurant in August 2019.

“I bent down, and he was holding his chest,” a tearful White testified Wednesday, describing how she tried to aid Fleming after watching the father of five crawl through the broken glass of the restaurant’s doors and windows. “His last words were, ‘Baby, he shot me.’”

Domeque Latice Jones, 29, fled the South University Avenue eatery but was arrested the following day while meeting with his lawyer to make arrangements to surrender, according to authorities. He’s been jailed since.

Charged with first-degree murder, Jones is standing trial this week before Pulaski County Circuit Judge Karen Whatley. A seven-woman, six-man jury resumes hearing evidence at 9:30 a.m. today.

Fleming was unarmed and never a threat to Jones, who shot the other man twice in the chest, then kept firing as the wounded Fleming crawled out of the restaurant to get away, deputy prosecutor Justin Brown told jurors in opening statements.

Jones even leaned over the restaurant counter to empty his pistol at the wounded man on the floor, the prosecutor told jurors, saying they will see the shooting for themselves on the restaurant’s security video.

“You’ll see with your own eyes Domeque Jones pull out his pistol and empty it into Marcus,” Brown told jurors. “This is a crime of opportunity, and it is murder.”

Jones’ attorney Louis Etoch told jurors in his opening statement that Jones shot Fleming in self-defense, saying that Fleming, much larger and heavier than Jones, had been the aggressor, threatening Jones and beating on the restaurant counter. If Fleming didn’t have a gun, he acted like he did, the attorney said.

Etoch said the men’s final encounter ended months of threats and harassment from Fleming, a man Jones knew to be a violent ex-con. Jones had been an assistant manager at the South University Avenue restaurant who unexpectedly came face to face with his antagonist just as he was finishing work, Etoch said.

“He was expecting to get off work in 30 minutes. Domeque Jones has never been a violent person. He was at work minding his own business,” Etoch told the jury. “Domeque was in fear of his life. What he was doing was self-defense.”

The source of the enmity was said to have stemmed from Fleming’s belief that Jones was either involved in the unsolved murder of Fleming’s sister, April Harris, or knew something about who killed her.

About 20 months earlier, in January 2018, the 30-yearold mother of four had been gunned down in front of her children by a masked assailant at Fairfax Crossing apartments, 5900 McCain Park Place in North Little Rock. What Fleming believed or thought about Jones hasn’t been made clear. Etoch told jurors that Jones’ brother had dated Harris.

White, who spent 52 minutes on the witness stand, said she’d never seen Jones before that day although she knew from Fleming who he was and how Fleming felt about him.

White said she didn’t know Jones worked at the South University restaurant, telling jurors the eatery was a convenient stop that day to pick up dinner for Fleming’s children. White said she noticed a worker in the back staring at them as they waited for their food but didn’t give it too much thought.

Then the worker took their bread sticks to the counter, roughly handling the food so the sauce fell to the floor, she testified, telling jurors that Jones seemed to be trying to antagonize them and called Fleming a “b***h a** n*****.”

Recognizing the antagonism and realizing who Jones was, White said, she told Fleming that they needed to leave even as he exchanged words with Jones.

“Don’t let me find out you had something to do with my sister,” Fleming told Jones, according to White. “I know you know something about my sister. You’re going to get yours.”

White said the couple went out and put the pizzas in their car, but Fleming decided to go back into the restaurant. Fleming told her that he wouldn’t be a man if he didn’t say something about how rudely they’d been treated, White testified.

She stayed with the car. Barely a minute later, the shooting started.

“The only thing I heard was ‘boom, boom, boom’ and bullets coming through the glass,” followed by Fleming crawling toward her, White said.