LITTLE ROCK — A woman who was shot in the head early Friday as Little Rock police attempted to serve a no-knock drug warrant died Friday night, police said. Two officers were wounded in the shootout, another suspect was shot, and one officer broke his arm.
The occupants of the upstairs apartment at 2200 Marshall St. opened fire after SWAT and narcotics officers yanked open a steel door. Police returned fire, shooting two people, as more than a dozen officers crashed through the back door of the duplex apartment about 6:30 a.m.
Irma Rogers, 42, of 1801 S. State St. was pronounced dead at 9:57 p.m. Friday atUAMS Medical Center, Pulaski County Coroner Garland Camper said.
The exchange marked the first time since March 7, 2002, that a Little Rock police officer was shot on duty.
Police declined to identify the officers, saying they had trouble notifying at least one officer’s family.
Police said the first officer through the door was shot once in each leg, and the second was hit in a part of his bulletresistant vest that covered his crotch. That shot did not penetrate the vest. The officer who broke his arm fell from a small balcony at the top of wooden stairs leading to the apartment’s back door - a distance of about 10 feet, police said.
“Our officers are fine,” Police Department spokesman Lt. Terry Hastings said Friday afternoon.
The injured officers were treated and released from Baptist Health Medical Center in Little Rock. The two suspects who were shot were taken to UAMS Medical Center.
“This type of incident is tragic, but unfortunately a reality caused by dangerous drugs in our community,” Police Chief Stuart Thomas said in a written statement. “I am optimistic that the injured officers will recover quickly.”
Thomas was in Dallas at a police accreditation conference.
Hastings said witness statements and interviews with officers who were at the scene indicated that only one person inside the apartment fired at police.
Little Rock police charged Harry Lee Porter Jr., 33, with two counts of criminal attempt to commit capital murder and two counts of first-degree battery on a police officer. Porter worked for a time as a general laborer at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Little Rock printing plant. His employment ended in January.
Wearing a gray jumpsuit, his gold-beaded dreadlocks hanging over his eyes, Porter said as detectives led him in handcuffs to a patrol car that he hid in a closet and didn’t fire a gun.
“No, I don’t want to talk about the charges,” Porter told reporters. “Y’all work for them.Y’all work for them. Who works for me? Obviously nobody.”
Inside the apartment, where police had also served a drug warrant in September, officers said they found a half-ounce of crack cocaine, a half-ounce of marijuana, hydrocodone pills, electronic scales and three handguns.
On Friday, Little Rock police levied drug charges against Porter and six other people found at the Marshall Street apartment. Charges against the hospitalized suspect are pending, Hastings said.
Porter, along with Asia Lewis, 21; Nicole Johnson, 39; Melissa Morris, 40; Larry Randall, 56; James Jones, 51; and Tamala Hayman, 65, were charged with possession of cocaine with intent to deliver, possession of marijuana with intent to deliver, possession of hydrocodone with intent to deliver, possession of guns within 1,000 feet of a church, possession of drug paraphernalia, simultaneous possession of guns and drugs, and maintaining drug premises. All live in Little Rock.
Another suspect, Floyd Walton, 53, of Little Rock, remained hospitalized Friday with a gunshot wound in the leg.
WARY NEIGHBORS
The blond-brick duplex has wooden back stairs leading to a small porch that is intermittently painted white, though most of the paint was peeling.
A bullet hole in one pane of the apartment’s front window was visible from the street.
North across West 22nd Street is a Jehovah’s Witness kingdom hall where people arriving to prepare for field ministry had to negotiate around yellow police crime-scene tape and swarms of detectives, officers and crime-scene specialists.
Mini Muhammad said she has lived in the neighborhood since 1970. She was out walking her terrier mix, Jax, near the duplex about 8:45 a.m. Friday.
“My brother called me this morning going to work,” she said. “He heard it on the news. I didn’t hear no shots.”
Once she heard about the shooting, she grabbed Jax and went straight to the crime scene.
“I came for the excitement,” she said. “But I don’t see no coroner van, SWAT’s all gone, so I guess there’s no body in there to come out. Guess I need to go on home.”
Muhammad said it was no secret that there was a 24-hour drug operation in the neighborhood.
“You’d have to be blind not to know it,” she said.
Others in the neighborhood were less forthcoming.
A man of about 30 who gave his name only as Jason said it was a quiet neighborhood.
“Man, I lived here since I was in elementary school, and this is crazy,” he said. “This doesn’t happen around here. It’s not that kind of place.”
Another man, a 32-yearold who identified himself as Tony, said it was only a matter of time.
“If people tell you they’re surprised - well, maybe surprised at the timing,” he said. “Maybe surprised it took this long. But surprised about something like this going down in the ’hood - in this ’hood? - no, no way.”
FAMILIAR TO POLICE
Last September, police arrested Porter at the same apartment after serving a search-andseizure warrant and reportedly finding an electronic scale in the living room and crack cocaine, a razor blade with cocaine residue, small plastic bags and $161 in the bedroom.
In a sworn affidavit filed to support that warrant, Little Rock police detective Wesley Butler wrote that the drug operation there relied on lookouts to warn of police or intruders. Butler requested and got a noknock warrant then, too.
Lookouts “would be capable of transmitting a warning to the occupants of the residence of the approach of law enforcement officers attempting to execute a search and seizure warrant, which could result in the destruction of evidence and endanger the safety of the executing officers,” Butler wrote. “The Affiant states that an approach to the residence at a late hour, facilitated by the cover of darkness, would greatly enhance the safe and successful execution of a search and seizure warrant.”
Hastings said tips from neighbors led police to the apartment in September and again on Friday.
In addition to the list of charges against Porter after the Friday raid, he faces a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm. His criminal history in Little Rock stretches to at least 1993, when he was 17.
Arkansas Department of Correction records show that Porter was sentenced to 42 months in a prison boot camp in April 1994 for manufacture, delivery and possession of a controlled substance. He was paroled five months later. Hewas arrested as an absconder in January 1995 and the next month was sentenced to 36 months on another drug charge. Released in October 1995, he was on parole until February 1998. He went back to prison again later that year on more drug convictions.
Little Rock police records show that he has been a crime victim as well.
On April 29, 2001, he told police that he was out for a walk when a man “came out of nowhere and shot him five times in the back.”
Staff members at UAMS Medical Center told police at the time that Porter had “multiple pellet shots” in his back, according to a police report. The next month, he told an officer that another man stole his driver’s license and used it to take $198 out of his bank account.
Information for this article was contributed by Chad Day of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/27/2010