LITTLE ROCK — Two Jacksonville teenagers were arrested Thursday after they beat up the owner of a pawn shop with an electric guitar, fracturing the man's skull, Jacksonville police said.
Donnalson D. Davis, 18, and his roommate Robert Coffey, 16, of Jacksonville entered Jim's Pawn Shop, 120 N. First St., around 9 a.m., according to a police report.
The young men had been in the shop before and "were always very polite and friendly," said owner Jim Pate, 56, in a telephone interview from his home Friday.
"Just [Thursday] they took a turn on me for some reason," he said.
One of the boys pretended to be interested in Pate's knife selection.
"One of them got me over by the knife case, had me busy, while the other one come in behind me with an electric guitar and whacked me in the head," Pate said. "I never knew what had hit me."
An officer responding to the scene wrote in an arrest report that she noticed "a large amount of blood coming from Pate's head & a large swollen discolored place on Pate's forehead."
There was also "a large amount of blood" and a black electric guitar on the floor, according to the report.
"They cracked my head - in fact, it took four clamps to shut it," said Pate, who went to work at his family-owned businessFriday morning but left early. Judging from his injuries, Pate thinks he was hit about three times.
Witnesses told police they saw the young men flee from the business and head northeast toward a field between some railroad tracks and Stonewall Drive.
A short time later, two teenage girls told police they had seen two black males hiding near East Martin Street and Stonewall Drive. There, officers found Davis and Coffey - and four handguns.
Davis and Coffey were each charged with one count of aggravated robbery and two counts of theft of property, all felonies.
Coffey, who also faces one count of marijuana possession, will be charged as an adult, police said.
State law defines aggravated robbery as when someone "isarmed with a deadly weapon" or "inflicts or attempts to inflict death or serious physical injury upon another person."
Davis and Coffey were being held in the Pulaski County jail Friday afternoon, each in lieu of $28,000 bond.
The robbery wasn't the first time someone has tried to break in to the pawn shop.
Just a couple of months ago, somebody attempted to do so by cutting a hole in the roof, Pate said. That time, the shop's silent alarm system alerted police and scared off the would-be burglars.
Thursday was the first time someone had actually taken anything from the shop, Pate said.
Although he was suffering from bruises and a stiff neck on Friday, Pate figures he'll be back to work soon.
"I'm not one to sit down too long," he said.
Arkansas, Pages 19 on 10/27/2007