"I'm gonna die, I'm fixin' to die"- A Bad Week in Little Rock- from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Shots kill 3rd man this week
Victim attacked at LR gas station
BY DANIEL NASAW ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
The fatal shooting of a Little Rock service station operator Friday evening was the third homicide in the city this week, according to police reports.
About 5:30 p.m., two men, one identified by detectives as Kenneth Harrison, 36, of Little Rock, arrived at the dingy gas station at 12th and Oak streets and approached Fulton Watson Jr., 41, police said. The pair had argued earlier in the day.
With little or no warning, Harrison fired a shotgun directly at Watson’s chest from about five feet away, according to witness and police accounts.
“He just got out [of his vehicle ] and shot him,” said Detective Eric Knowles.
When police officers arrived several minutes later, Watson’s pulse was weak, and an ambulance took him to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Medical Center, where he later died.
Knowles said Friday night that police were in the process of obtaining a warrant charging Harrison with first-degree murder.
The homicide came during a week of deadly violence in the capital city, in which three people were fatally shot and at least two more were wounded by gunfire.
On Tuesday evening, 28-year-old Reginald Martindale was shot to death at Westpark Meadows Apartments at 1701 Westpark Drive. Investigators were able to identify the Jacksonville resident, whose body bore no identification documents, when his mother arrived at the scene after receiving an anonymous phone call saying he’d been shot and killed there, police said.
About 4 a.m. the next morning, 20-year-old Corte Beavers of 3801 Base Line Road, Apt. 8, was shot in the right thigh and left side of his back in the 5100 block of Base Line Road. Still alive when officers arrived, Beavers was barely able to speak and couldn’t tell police his name or who shot him.
“I’m gonna die, I’m fixin’ to die” was all he said. He died about 10 a.m. Wednesday morning at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Medical Center.
In nonfatal violence this week, two men were shot Wednesday night at a recreation hall just blocks from the site of Friday’s homicide.
Harry Jackson, 33, and Fredrick Gilbert, 43, told police they were shot at 1724 Pine St. about 10:30 p.m. Police met them at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Medical Center about 20 minutes later.
Gilbert told police he was playing cards at the hall when a black man about 6 feet tall and wearing a ski mask entered and began shooting “randomly” with a semiautomatic rifle. Gilbert was wounded in the left leg below the knee.
Jackson said he was walking on the street in front of the hall when a man he could not describe began shooting. He dropped to the ground, then realized he had been shot in the left hand and twice in the lower back.
A man Jackson said he didn’t know drove him to the hospital.
Police had made no arrests in the shootings and slayings by Friday evening, and some residents and police expressed fears of a return to the violent days of the mid-1990 s gang wars.
“Three dead in one week that’s a crime spree,” said the Rev. Benny Johnson, founder of Stop the Violence, an anti-crime community advocacy group.
Johnson said he would like City Manager Bruce Moore, Mayor Jim Dailey and Police Chief Stuart Thomas to reinstate a policy of strictly enforcing antiloitering statutes. He said that under the regime of Louie Caudell, Little Rock police chief between 1988 and 2000, such a policy met with some success in preventing violent crime.
Dwayne Moore, who lives across 12th Street from the service station, said that his cousin Vollie Wells Jr., 27, was shot and killed in June 2004 at 15th and Oak streets, just three blocks away.
“It was calm for a while, all this shooting,” Moore said. “It’s starting up again.”
This story was published Saturday, November 12, 2005
Victim attacked at LR gas station
BY DANIEL NASAW ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
The fatal shooting of a Little Rock service station operator Friday evening was the third homicide in the city this week, according to police reports.
About 5:30 p.m., two men, one identified by detectives as Kenneth Harrison, 36, of Little Rock, arrived at the dingy gas station at 12th and Oak streets and approached Fulton Watson Jr., 41, police said. The pair had argued earlier in the day.
With little or no warning, Harrison fired a shotgun directly at Watson’s chest from about five feet away, according to witness and police accounts.
“He just got out [of his vehicle ] and shot him,” said Detective Eric Knowles.
When police officers arrived several minutes later, Watson’s pulse was weak, and an ambulance took him to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Medical Center, where he later died.
Knowles said Friday night that police were in the process of obtaining a warrant charging Harrison with first-degree murder.
The homicide came during a week of deadly violence in the capital city, in which three people were fatally shot and at least two more were wounded by gunfire.
On Tuesday evening, 28-year-old Reginald Martindale was shot to death at Westpark Meadows Apartments at 1701 Westpark Drive. Investigators were able to identify the Jacksonville resident, whose body bore no identification documents, when his mother arrived at the scene after receiving an anonymous phone call saying he’d been shot and killed there, police said.
About 4 a.m. the next morning, 20-year-old Corte Beavers of 3801 Base Line Road, Apt. 8, was shot in the right thigh and left side of his back in the 5100 block of Base Line Road. Still alive when officers arrived, Beavers was barely able to speak and couldn’t tell police his name or who shot him.
“I’m gonna die, I’m fixin’ to die” was all he said. He died about 10 a.m. Wednesday morning at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Medical Center.
In nonfatal violence this week, two men were shot Wednesday night at a recreation hall just blocks from the site of Friday’s homicide.
Harry Jackson, 33, and Fredrick Gilbert, 43, told police they were shot at 1724 Pine St. about 10:30 p.m. Police met them at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Medical Center about 20 minutes later.
Gilbert told police he was playing cards at the hall when a black man about 6 feet tall and wearing a ski mask entered and began shooting “randomly” with a semiautomatic rifle. Gilbert was wounded in the left leg below the knee.
Jackson said he was walking on the street in front of the hall when a man he could not describe began shooting. He dropped to the ground, then realized he had been shot in the left hand and twice in the lower back.
A man Jackson said he didn’t know drove him to the hospital.
Police had made no arrests in the shootings and slayings by Friday evening, and some residents and police expressed fears of a return to the violent days of the mid-1990 s gang wars.
“Three dead in one week that’s a crime spree,” said the Rev. Benny Johnson, founder of Stop the Violence, an anti-crime community advocacy group.
Johnson said he would like City Manager Bruce Moore, Mayor Jim Dailey and Police Chief Stuart Thomas to reinstate a policy of strictly enforcing antiloitering statutes. He said that under the regime of Louie Caudell, Little Rock police chief between 1988 and 2000, such a policy met with some success in preventing violent crime.
Dwayne Moore, who lives across 12th Street from the service station, said that his cousin Vollie Wells Jr., 27, was shot and killed in June 2004 at 15th and Oak streets, just three blocks away.
“It was calm for a while, all this shooting,” Moore said. “It’s starting up again.”
This story was published Saturday, November 12, 2005
posted by Steve Nawojczyk at
7:37 AM
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