NLR man convicted of murder in Sherwood hospital shooting

Leighton Delane Whitfield, gunned down in his fiancee’s hospital room 15 months ago, got what he deserved, the 21-year-old’s killer told a Pulaski County jury Thursday before he was found guilty of the crime.

Whitfield was shot three times in the chest and six more in the face, and FBI crime scene examiners, supporting the Sherwood police investigation, collected 12 shell casings from the room. Evidence showed that Whitfield’s killer stood so close to Whitfield that gunpowder burned his face and neck.

“I am a man of my word and if I tell you, ‘If you stand up, I’ll kill you,’ you had best believe I’m going to kill you,” Raymond Allen Lovett Jr. testified. “He decided not to take me seriously and now he’s dead.”

The shooting sparked a citywide frenzy in Sherwood, and a multiagency police response, with authorities fearing for some time that Whitfield’s murder was the work of an active-shooter killer who might have randomly targeted him and planned to attack others.

Lovett, who was an acquaintance of Whitfield’s fiancee, told jurors he’d grown to hate Whitfield after hearing for months that Whitfield had been abusing the woman. The men had never met before. Lovett said he felt no remorse for the murder but did feel bad about how the September 2022 slaying at a Sherwood hospital had upset the victim’s family. Lovett further said he did not care whether jurors believed his version of events.

“I don’t care if they believe it,” he testified. “I just want them to know because it’s the truth.”

Lovett, of North Little Rock, did tell jurors he was “haunted” by Whitfield and can sometimes see his face, but also suggested on the witness stand that his victim was a “piece of s***,” a term that he also used to described Whitfield for police after his arrest a couple of hours after the murder.

Prosecuting Attorney Will Jones, with co-counsel Jeanna Sherrill and Victoria Wadley, told jurors in closing statements that the bullet wounds show Whitfield was likely shot while he was still sitting down, with his killer then standing over him to fire more shots.

Jones said Lovett’s 90 minutes of testimony was a “capital-murder confession” to a “cold-blooded, calculated” killing. The six men and six women of the jury deliberated for a little more than an hour to agree, a verdict that resulted in Circuit

Judge Cathi Compton imposing an automatic life sentence for the 25-year-old defendant, who had never been in serious trouble with the law before.

Lovett and Whitfield crossed paths because both were at CHI St. Vincent North hospital to see Whitfield’s fiancee, 22-year-old Jade Pye, who was being treated for an illness on the 60-bed facility’s fourth floor.

The men weren’t supposed to meet. Whitfield had spent the night sleeping in Pye’s room but had left to go to work. Lovett, known as Ajay, had come to visit the woman after learning Whitfield was gone.

Pye testified she did not invite Lovett and was surprised when he arrived, telling jurors that while she’d known him for years, she was careful to avoid him.

Pye told jurors she was surprised again when Whitfield returned unexpectedly because a vehicle breakdown had forced him to take the day off work. One of the first things Whitfield did was caress her feverishly hot face, Pye said, telling jurors she had a 106-degree fever.

“His hands were really cold and I’m burning up so he’s trying to cool me down,” she said.

Whitfield was cordial with Lovett, Pye told jurors, but Lovett mostly stopped talking when the other man arrived, even as she and Whitfield chatted. She told jurors that when Whitfield asked Lovett to plug in his phone into the socket next to where Lovett was sitting, Lovett ignored him and went into the bathroom.

Lovett came out a few minutes later and asked the couple about their two-year relationship and future plans, Pye said. Then, Lovett told Whitfield he was “lucky” that Lovett had not shot him then, Pye testified.

“‘The only reason I don’t blow your head off right now is because [a friend] told me not to,’” Pye said, recounting Lovett’s words and how his face changed expression as he spoke. There was a brief exchange of words between the men, then Lovett started shooting, she told jurors.

Pye described seeing Whitfield shot and fall back in his chair, followed by Lovett calmly leaving her hospital room.

Pye was not asked whether Whitfield had abused her. During her 26 minutes on the stand, she repeatedly clutched her necklace. She told jurors that the jewelry had been shot off Whitfield when he was killed and that she had taken to wearing it continuously.

Lovett told jurors he loved Pye but denied his feelings were romantic. He told jurors he’d heard rumors for years that Whitfield was abusing her. He said Pye had recently told him Whitfield once choked her until she nearly passed out.

Whitfield’s arrival during his visit with Pye deeply angered him, Lovett testified, telling jurors his usual practice when he gets mad is to get quiet and that’s what he did on this occasion. He said he had gone into the bathroom to try and calm himself, and that he had next decided to leave. But then Whitfield gave him a “dirty look.”

Lovett said he warned Whitfield that if he ever laid hands on Pye, “it won’t be good for you,” to which Whitfield responded with a chuckle.

Whitfield, who had been seated next to Pye’s bed, started talking back, Lovett said, telling jurors he lifted up his shirt to show his gun. Whitfield balled up his fists and started to stand, Lovett said, telling jurors he started shooting when he saw Whitfield’s feet hit the floor.

“I went for my weapon,” he testified, showing jurors how he had cupped the pistol with both hands to aim.

He said he fired at Whitfield three times, paused, and then shot at him eight more times. Lovett said he couldn’t explain why he kept shooting the man, telling jurors he felt like he was outside his body watching himself fire that second round of shots.

“He went down … and then I lost it,” he said. “Imagine being trapped in your own mind. You see what you’re doing but you can’t stop yourself. I don’t know why I shot him so many times. I really don’t.”

Whitfield is to blame for his own death, Lovett insisted.

“He got up to fight me,” he testified. “He decided not to take me seriously and now he’s dead.”

Lovett also disputed the significance of a text message he sent while he was in the restroom, shortly before the fatal shooting.

“I should kill this boy right now. I’m standing two feet away from him. I’ve never shown this much restraint in my life,” the message read. Lovett said the text was not the sinister sign that he had planned to kill Whitfield that prosecutors had made it out to be. He said the message was to his former stepmother, 44-year-old Cynthia “Cindy” Lovett, who knew about his anger at Whitfield and would come to the hospital and break the tension between him and Whitfield.

Cindy Lovett told jurors that the defendant always carried a gun “like you and I would put on our shoes and socks.”

Raymond Lovett disputed the assertion that he’d had a gun that day because he was planning to kill Whitfield.

He told jurors he’d been so badly bullied as a child — then wounded in a shooting as a ninth grader — that he has kept a gun ever since. He told them he had two more guns with him when he killed Whitfield but left them for his father before surrendering to police.

Lovett said he doesn’t usually carry his pistol where guns are banned but knew that hospital security was not checking visitors for weapons then.

Lovett was the only witness called by defense attorneys Robby Golden and Jonathan Lane, who told jurors to find their client guilty of manslaughter, which carries a 10-year maximum sentence. They argued that Whitfield’s death was no planned-out murder like prosecutors claimed, but that Lovett had killed the man in an angry fit, enraged by his belief that Whitfield had been abusing Pye.

The defense did win a concession from jurors, who cleared Lovett of felony aggravated assault — which carries up to six years in prison — for the way he held his gun in Pye’s hospital room.

He testified that he never menaced her with the gun and would never have threatened her with it. Pye testified that Lovett pointed the weapon in her direction immediately after killing Whitfield, but didn’t aim it at her. She further told jurors she didn’t ever think he was going to use the weapon on her.