LR police: Teen hit by van, beaten, dies

Little Rock Fire Capt. Roger Poole (right) watches as his crew aids Michael Stanley after the boy was run over on his bicycle Thursday morning. Police said the van in the background hit the teen.
Little Rock Fire Capt. Roger Poole (right) watches as his crew aids Michael Stanley after the boy was run over on his bicycle Thursday morning. Police said the van in the background hit the teen.

— After having his wallet plucked from his hand by a teenager late Thursday morning, a Little Rock man ran down the youth with his van in a nearby vacant lot and then beat him, police said. The 14-year-old later died in a hospital.

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Police walk Michael David Sadler, Sr., to a waiting patrol car after charging him with one count on 1st degree murder.

Michael Sadler, 58, of 1800 S. Broadway was arrested as he waited on the grassy slope where, police said, he struck Michael Stanley with his Chrysler van. Sadler was charged with first-degree murder a few hours later.

A 14-year-old died after being struck by a vehicle that was chasing him Thursday in Little Rock.

Police investigate teen's death after chase

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According to police,Sadler was standing in the parking lot outside the Asher 1-Stop shortly before noon, when Michael snatched Sadler’s wallet and hopped on his bicycle. Michael fled north on a gravel drive next to the business, according to police.

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Sadler jumped into his van and chased Michael through a vacant lot and along South Oak Street, then drove over the curb and into a second vacant lot near West 27th and South Oak streets, a block away from the store’s parking lot, where his vehicle struck the teenager, witnesses and police said.

Michael of 5104 W. 23rd St. was taken to Arkansas Children’s Hospital where he died.

Little Rock Police Department spokesman Sgt. Cassandra Davis said detectives didn’t find a weapon at the scene but did find the wallet not far from where the teen was struck.

Davis said the wallet contained “several hundred dollars.”

The teen was a student at a Little Rock alternative school, according to Davis, though she didn’t know which school or why the teen wasn’t in class Thursday morning.

While Little Rock detectives scoured the scene Thursday afternoon, foot traffic between it and the nearby convenience store swelled with Michael’s family members and friends incensed over reports that someone had assaulted the teen after running him over.

The “dude beat on him deliberately,” said one woman, who identified herself as a friend of Michael’s family. “He beat on him deliberately ... over some s*.”

Alexander Phillips, who lives a few houses away from where Michael was injured, said he often mows the empty lot across from his home. He said he was so upset at seeing the van rip through the grass that he didn’t immediately notice the teen on the bicycle.

After driving through the first vacant lot, Michael and Sadler turned south onto South Oak Street, according to police. The teen then again pedaled his bicycle off the road and to the top of a small hill in the second vacant lot, police said.

The van followed and drove right over him, Phillips said. When the driver got out of the van, he pulled the teen from under the vehicle, threw him up against the van and started to beat on him with his hands and feet, Phillips said.

“He’d fall down,” Phillips said of the teenager, and the driver would pull him “back up again. ... He was going through his clothes, yelling for his money.”

Before Phillips could call police, he said, two men in white polo shirts and carrying radios ran up to the lot where the van had stopped.

According to Davis, two city code-enforcement employees working in the neighborhood saw an older man assaulting the teen and called police.

Phillips said the two employees got between the driver and Michael, and tended to the injured teen until emergency crews arrived.

An hour after watching it all, Phillips said his hands were still shaking.

“I ain’t never witnessed nothing like that,” Phillips said. The driver “was stomping and yelling ‘where’s my wallet, where’s my money, give me my wallet.’”

On March 7, Sadler was arrested in Little Rock and charged with disorderly conduct, public intoxication, resisting arrest and second degree assault, according to police, but court records regarding that the case were unavailable late Thursday afternoon.

In April of 2009, Sadler was charged with several felony drug charges after Pulaski County deputies reported finding drugs and drug paraphernalia at his home.

Sadler was found innocent of those charges in January 2010, court records said.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 05/04/2012

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