Asked teens for aid, man tells LR police

LITTLE ROCK — Michael Sadler told police he flagged down two bicycle-riding teenagers Thursday on Asher Avenue and offered them money for help finding a man who stole a gun from him at the nearby Acme Motel at 3301 Roosevelt Road.

Sadler, 58, met the boys behind the Asher 1-Stop at Asher and South Maple Street in Little Rock and showed them the $1,300 in his wallet, he told police.

When one of the teens — Michael Stanley Jr. — snatched the wallet out of Sadler’s lap and pedaled away, Sadler told police, he drove his minivan after the 14-year-old. Preliminary reports Thursday had indicated that the chase began at a different location.

Footage from a surveillance camera positioned at the rear of the convenience store showed that the teens split up, one going along South Oak Street and Michael, followed by Sadler’s minivan, going south through the alley next to the convenience store, then off the pavement and into a vacant lot.

The chase didn’t go much farther, according to South Oak Street resident Alexander Phillips, who watched as the van followed Michael a few hundred feet on the street and then both went up a sloped lot catty-cornered from his home. Phillips said he saw the van drive over the teen.

Sadler told detectives that he felt a “bump” when his van struck the boy and his bicycle.

Witnesses said that when Sadler stepped out of the van, he pulled Michael from under it.

Sadler then punched and stomped on the teen, who didn’t resist, and yelled at him to give back his money, witnesses told officers.

With blood streaming from his mouth and his eyes rolled back in his head, Michael didn’t respond to Sadler’s demands, detectives wrote.

Two city code-enforcement officers patrolling in the area saw the fight and stepped between Sadler and the unresponsive teen.

Once police arrived, Sadler was taken in for questioning, where he told officers he didn’t mean to hurt the teen, that he just “wanted his money back,” affidavits said.

Police found the wallet in the lot while Michael was being taken to Arkansas Children’s Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 12:27 p.m.

Sadler of 1800 S. Broadway pleaded innocent to a first-degree murder charge in Little Rock District Court early Friday morning, where Judge Alice Lightle set his bail at $1 million.

Later Friday, the teen’s father, Michael Stanley Sr., sat on the steps of the 5104 W. 23rd St. home where he lived with his son. He shook his head after hearing about the high bail. For him, there was no price that could ease his mind.

“We can’t talk to our son anymore,” Stanley said. “You don’t think this would ever happen to you.”

Michael, or “Lil’ Mike,” had five sisters and six brothers, a love of basketball and friends reaching from his downtown neighborhood all the way to Jacksonville, Stanley said.

Stanley said that if Sadler is convicted, he wants to see him get the death penalty.

“The way [Sadler] was chasing him, you know he wanted him dead,” Stanley said a day after watching the video from the Asher convenience store. “That’s when you cross the line. [Michael] suffered.”

Stanley added, “He done killed someone who hadn’t lived a life yet.”

According to Stanley, his son got on the school bus every day and went to Argenta Academy, an alternative public school in North Little Rock.

Stanley said he didn’t know why his son was riding his bicycle along Asher Avenue in the middle of the school day. But he thinks Sadler, a grown man, should have known better than to get involved with his son in the first place.

“You should know damn well you shouldn’t be getting in a transaction with a kid who should be in school,” Stanley said. “[Sadler] should have been on the phone with the police.”

North Little Rock School District spokesman Shara Brazear confirmed that Michael, who had been enrolled in Felder Academy in Little Rock, was a student at Argenta Academy, but she said he wasn’t there often.

“He’d had quite a few absences,” Brazear said. “[According to the staff] he did not attend regularly.”

Stanley said he and Michael’s mother, who works two jobs, did the best they could for their son and continue to do so for their other children.

“It’s hard you know,” he said. “We encouraged him to do right.”