Lonoke man gets 20 years for gunfire injuring mom protecting child
A 22-year-old Lonoke man has accepted a 20-year prison sentence for shooting a Jacksonville woman as she shielded her 2-year-old daughter from gunfire.
Sentencing papers filed Friday show Anthony Terral Carroll Jr. pleaded guilty to first-degree battery, committing a terroristic act and two counts of being a felon in possession of a firearm, charges stemming from separate arrests, in exchange for the 20-year sentence imposed by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Karen Whatley.
Under the conditions of Carroll’s plea agreement, negotiated by deputy prosecutor Daniel Curtis and public defender Christen Carter, the sentence will run concurrently with a 20-year prison sentence Carroll received in April 2023 after pleading guilty to second-degree sexual assault, reduced from rape, in Lonoke County. Details of the accusations in that case, involving an October 2021 incident, were sealed. A felony fleeing charge stemming from a March 2022 arrest by Jacksonville police was also dropped.
The first-degree battery and terroristic act charges stem from Carroll’s October 2022 arrest, five months after 34-year-old Shera Randle was shot on May 16, 2022, court filings show.
Randle was shot in the back when the car her brother was driving near the intersection of East Center Street at the 300 block of Graham Road came under fire about 8:45 a.m. May 16, 2022. Officers arrived and found two rifle casings in the roadway.
A witness provided police with video footage showing an exchange of gunfire between a man in the street with a gold Nissan Altima and people in a gray Ford Fusion. The recording showed the Nissan driver getting out of his car to shoot at the Fusion behind him.
A second witness said the Nissan driver appeared to be firing an AR-15 style rifle, de
scribing for investigators how the driver fired two shots before the gun appeared to jam.
About that same time, police were called to a North Little Rock hospital where they found Randle being treated for a bullet wound that had gone through her back.
She told police that she, her daughter, her brother, 21-year-old Akheim Dewon Jefferson and his girlfriend, Ariona Antonette Flemons, 25, together in the Ford, had been going to a tire shop because someone had slashed her tires.
With Flemons driving, they came upon a former friend of her brother’s, whom she knew only as Blockboy, driving the Nissan, Randle told investigators. Randle said Blockboy and her brother had had a falling out, which she did not know much about. Police determined Blockboy was Carroll after seeing his photograph on Facebook.
She said their car was chasing Carroll when somewhere on South Spring Street Carroll pulled over, got out with a rifle and started shooting. Randle, who was in the back seat with her daughter, said she put the child on the floorboard and was covering her with her body when she was shot. Her brother, in the front passenger seat, returned fire, Randle said. He was found to have been acting in self-defense, court files show.
Police got an arrest warrant for Carroll, and he was taken into custody by North Little Rock police who found him in an illegally parked gray Chevrolet Tahoe at 3900 Emerson Drive.
According to an arrest report, two pistols, one of them stolen, were found in the vehicle. A 17-year-old boy was found to be in possession of the stolen gun while the second pistol was under Carroll’s seat. Carroll, who has a 2021 Lonoke County theft conviction for stealing an AK-47 in May 2020, was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm.