LITTLE ROCK — The Jacksonville man charged in the Monday night death of a firefighter has been enrolled in a conditional-release program through the State Hospital since he was acquitted on grounds of mental defect on battery and terroristic threatening charges in 2011, court records show.
Bryce Allen, 47, of 113 Stevenson St. was charged Tuesday with second-degree murder, as well as two counts of criminal attempt to commit second-degree murder after police said he rammed his van into two Jacksonville firefighters and a Jacksonville police officer working at a car accident scene Monday night.
Fire Department Capt. Donald Jones was killed, and firefighter Jason Bowmaster and police officer Daniel Di-Matteo were critically injured.
According to a Feb. 14 letter sent this year to Pulaski County Circuit Court from the Arkansas Department of Human Services Behavioral Health Services Division, Allen, was complying with his treatment plan and was following the conditions of his court-ordered conditional release.
In February 2011 - a month after he was acquitted of attacking and threatening a police officer - Allen was enrolled in the state’s “911” program, which allows State Hospital patients who have been acquitted of criminal charges by reason of mental disease or defect to re-enter the community as long as they follow court-ordered behavioral, residential and treatment conditions.
Department of Human Services spokesman Amy Webb, who declined to comment about Allen’s case, said a patient’s conditional release,or the revocation of that release, ultimately rests with the court.
Currently, the program takes five years to complete, Webb said, and includes about 460 patients.
“If the person doesn’t follow the conditions of the release, it can be revoked and [the patient] can be taken back to the hospital,” Webb said. “The [five-year period] begins again once they’re conditionally released again from the hospital.”
Webb said she couldn’t comment about whether Allen’s second-degree murder charges would result in him going back to the hospital.
“Just because someone has been previously acquitted [by] mental disease or defect, it doesn’t mean that that would happen if they had a subsequent charge,” Webb said. “It’s up to the judge.”
His January 2011 acquittal stemmed from Feb. 5, 2009, when his car ran out of gas, records said.
According to police reports, Allen, then 44, was approached by a University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences police officer, who told him that someone was getting him some gasoline.
He said he needed to meet his mother and tried to leave, but the officer told him he needed to wait, records said.Allen then called the female officer a “ho,” struck her in the face and approached her in “an aggressive manner,” records said.
The officer drew her weapon, and Allen told her “Just shoot me. You’re not gonna shoot me,” the records said.
Allen was arrested without further confrontation, according to the court, but while he was being handcuffed, he told the officer that “they would both be dead that night.”
He was charged with felony terroristic threatening in that case.
In October 2009, Allen was charged with another felony count of terroristic threatening after police said he sent threatening texts to a female acquaintance.
In 2000, Allen was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, according to court records. He told doctors that over several years he had checked himself in and out of the hospital after experiencing visual and auditory hallucinations.
According to court records, Allen - who was honorably discharged in 1986 after a three-year stint in the Army - had been hospitalized 10-20 times at the veterans hospital in Little Rock after failing to take his medication, which was used to treat “delusions related to believing the [Ku Klux Klan] will rob his bank,believing the ER doctor is in the KKK ... hallucinations of a half man/half beast.”
A Feb. 11, 2011, conditionalrelease report to the court said Allen had a “low likelihood of future violence if [he] continued in treatment and medication [compliance].”
Jacksonville Police Department spokesman April Kiser said Allen was headed to 8411 Arkansas 161 late Monday night after getting word that his mother had been in a car accident there that had damaged a gas main.
Police and fire crews had set up vehicles to block traffic until the gas main could be repaired, and according to Kiser, Allen veered around the emergency vehicles, aimed his van at the first-responders and accelerated.
Allen was arrested after additional police officers arrived at the scene.
He was being held Wednesday night at the Pulaski County jail in lieu of $750,000 bond.
Bowmaster and DiMatteo underwent surgery Tuesday and were in stable condition Wednesday, Kiser said.
Funds have been set up for Jones, Bowmaster and DiMatteo, Kiser said.A candlelight vigil for Jones, a Jacksonville firefighter for 31 years, is scheduled for 9 p.m. today at the fire station at 15923 Arch St. in Little Rock.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/22/2012