PB man sentenced for NLR shooting
45 years given for McDonald’s gunfire that left victim dead, another injured
A 21-year-old Pine Bluff man has been sentenced to 45 years in prison for shooting two men in the parking lot of a North Little Rock McDonald’s restaurant, killing one and wounding the other.
Sentencing papers filed last month show Javian Shadmallikbo Sprinkle dropped his legal challenges to second-degree murder, reduced from first-degree murder, first-degree battery and five counts of committing a terroristic act in exchange for the sentence imposed by Circuit Judge Leon Johnson.
The plea agreement was negotiated by deputy prosecutor Whitney Ohlhausen and public defender Harrison Tome. Sprinkle, who had never been in serious trouble with the law before, will not be eligible to apply for parole until March 2036 when he will be 33.
Prosecutors described victim 62-year-old Michael Undra Littles, a father of one, as an “innocent bystander” who was “essentially executed” by Sprinkle. According to police reports and court files, police were called about 6:30 a.m. Sept. 21, 2021, to the McDonald’s at 4008 McCain Blvd., where officers found Littles shot dead behind the wheel of a 2018 silver Honda Civic.
The surviving victim, 27-year-old Marcus Rasheen Johnson of Judsonia, was found suffering from gunshot wounds underneath a red Jeep parked nearby, with a hysterical Maryam Anika Ballard of North Little Rock crying that “they shot him.”
Ballard told investigators Littles had driven Johnson to the restaurant so Johnson could sell a pistol to a woman, stating that she had been in the car with them but did not see the shooting because she had been lying down in the back seat.
Ballard has since been murdered. The 47-year-old mother of three with two grandchildren was found by Little Rock police shot dead at 2407 S. Cross St. in November. No arrests have been made, and authorities have not connected her slaying with Littles’ murder.
Johnson told police the men were at the McDonald’s so he could sell a gun to a woman. Johnson said he had an encounter at a Taco Bell in Little Rock with the woman, Ashley Williams, 22, of Little Rock, sometime before the shooting. He said Williams had pointed a gun at him, he took the weapon from her and then agreed to sell it back to her at the McDonald’s.
Johnson said that when he and Littles arrived at McDonald’s, Williams was in a car with a man Johnson did not know. Johnson said she cursed them and the man jumped out of the car and started shooting.
Williams, Sprinkle’s girlfriend, confirmed the gun incident for investigators, including the plans to meet at McDonald’s, and identified Sprinkle as the shooter, court filings show. Surveillance footage from the restaurant shows the shooting but the video is not clear enough to identify Sprinkle.
Sprinkle was arrested about two months later and has been jailed ever since.