Assault charges dropped against convicted killer

— Prosecutors on Monday dropped felony assault and battery charges against a 49-year-old North Little Rock woman accused of threatening to kill her daughter - 15 years after the woman killed her ex-husband, the daughter’s father.

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Deputy prosecutor Kayce Green said she had to drop the case against Neadie Marie Gilliam because Gilliam’s accusers, 21-year-old Shalonda Gilliam, her daughter, and Quinton Earl Settles, 23, refused to cooperate with prosecutors.

Court records show Settles is a fugitive, wanted on probation violation charges on 2011 convictions for theft and drug possession.

Gilliam had been scheduled to stand trial Monday on aggravated assault and second-degree battery charges.

According to an arrest report, Neadie Gilliam was arrested at her Foster Street home on March 10, 2011. The report said she was arguing with her daughter when she put a knife to the younger woman’s neck and said, “I’m going to kill you like your father.”

Gilliam cut Settles on his right thumb when he tried to break up the altercation, the report said. Shalonda Gilliam was able to get her mother away from Settles, and the older woman threw the knife away, the report said. Police were unable to find it.

In December 1997, Neadie Gilliam was convicted of manslaughter - a charge reduced from first-degree murder - for fatally stabbing her husband, Woodrow Lee Gilliam, 47, that April, when her daughter was 6.

Neadie Gilliam stabbed him through the shoulder, piercing his lung. Woodrow Gilliam staggered out of the family’s Lincoln Street home and died in the street. The couple were divorced but had gotten back together.

Prosecutors contended that she was angry with her husband because he poured water on the TV she was watching.

Gilliam testified that Woodrow Gilliam was regularly abusive and was beating her up because she wouldn’t give him any money. She said he had poured water on her while she was plugging in the TV and that he had grabbed a pocketknife, so she got a larger kitchen knife to protect herself.

Gilliam was sentenced to five years on probation.

In March 2009, one of Gilliam’s four sons, Keith Lamont Harris, 26, was fatally shot outside North Little Rock’s Shorter Gardens housing project on North Beech Street. The killer, 31-year-old Wilson Antonio Price of North Little Rock, was sentenced to life in prison in July 2007.

Arkansas, Pages 7 on 07/31/2012

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