LITTLE ROCK — The North Little Rock man charged in his friend’s Monday night slaying told detectives that he took the knife to his friend for the “purpose of committing a sacrifice,” detectives said.
Devante Cooney, 19, was arrested near the 1118 N. H St. home of Sidney Rufus, where witnesses said Cooney pulled a knife and stabbed Rufus several times in the chest and back at 6:15 p.m.
On Tuesday, he appeared in North Little Rock District Court and pleaded innocent to first-degree murder. Detectives said he admitted to stabbing Rufus during a Monday evening interview.
Rufus, 23, was taken to Baptist Hospital in North Little Rock where he died from his wounds.
Although North Little Rock police did not return calls for comment to elaborate on what Cooney may have meant by a “sacrifice,” Rufus’ live-in girlfriend, Chanta Hines, said that kind of talk was common with Cooney, who she said was prone to bouts of paranoia and delusions.
When she first met him, “he was normal, you could have a normal conversation,” Hines said. “He didn’t do that weird talk, but ... he hallucinated, always tripping.”
According to Hines, earlier this summer they were setting off fireworks outside and Cooney was convinced that someone was shooting at him.
One night when he stayed with her and Rufus, she saw him staring out the window for a long time because he knew there were people outside watching him.
She went outside, she said, but there was no one out there.
Hines was at her home with her boyfriend, Cooney and a few other friends early Monday evening.
She left with a friend and her son to go to the store and when she came back, she saw that people were leaving.
Hines said she left her son in the car with her friend and went up the stairs to her home, which sits on stilts in the Dixie neighborhood, and she saw Cooney, who once lived with her and Rufus at their home for nearly two months, standing in the doorway with a knife.
“He just stood there and stared,” Hines said. “I went inside, [Rufus] was laying there ... bleeding ... still breathing. I said ‘What did you do? What did you do?’”
A week earlier, Cooney was hanging out with Hines while she was cleaning up around the house. He told her that he was “already dead” but that he was there to “bless” her and Rufus.
“I didn’t think much of it. ... He gets to talking like that,” Hines said.
When Cooney left after the stabbing Monday evening, he told Hines: “‘This what y’all wanted, that’s your blessing,’” she said.
While she tried to apply pressure to her boyfriend’s wounds with a towel, Hines said Cooney walked out the door without another word or an expression on his face. He was still carrying the knife when he left.
Calls to Cooney’s family and police were not returned Tuesday. But according to court records, Cooney has a troubled history.
Cooney was identified by a Little Rock River Market piano player as the man who stuck a gun in the musician’s face in a 2008 armed robbery, court records say.
Cooney, who was 15 at the time of his arrest, was charged as an adult.
But Pulaski County Circuit Judge Willard Proctor Jr. ruled that Cooney could be rehabilitated and transferred his case to the state’s Youth Services Division, despite the protestations of prosecutors who argued that Cooney’s history of thefts, as well as his involvement in an accidental shooting the year before, warranted full prosecution.
Before the judge’s decision, Cooney’s mother, Valerie Ervin, told the court that her son was “immature” for his age and suffered from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and that he wasn’t medicated when he committed the robbery.
Rufus’ stabbing came just two nights after a North Little Rock convenience store clerk was gunned down by an armed robber who had left the store with his two partners, only to come back inside and shoot her at close range, Police Department spokesman Sgt. Brian Dedrick said.
No arrests have been made in that shooting, which claimed the life of 29-yearold Akiya Egeston.
The Tuesday night stabbing marks the seventh homicide in North Little Rock this year, compared with nine homicides at the same point last year.
Cooney remained at the Pulaski County jail early Tuesday night. No bail had been set.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 09/26/2012