FORT SMITH — Anita Smith thought Jerald Lavelle Brewer DH was going to kill her when he beat and kidnapped her before she escaped from a Mena gas station Sunday, according to the Sebastian County sheriff’s office.
Smith, 34, suffered injuries to her throat, arms and legs and had to receive treatment at a hospital in Mena before being reunited with her family late Sunday, a sheriff’s office news release stated.
Brewer, 38, of Nashville, Ark., was arrested in Idabel, Okla., by local police, driving Smith’s car, the release stated. He was charged in Sebastian County warrants Monday with kidnapping, aggravated assault and second-degree domestic battery. He was being held in Oklahoma on Monday awaiting extradition back to Arkansas.
According to the release, deputies were called to a home in the 1200 block of Jenson DH Road just west of Hackett in south Sebastian County about 8:45 p.m. on a report that a woman was taken from her home against her will.
As investigators arrived on the scene to process evidence at the home, the sheriff’s office communications center put out information about the car and abduction to law enforcement agencies in western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma, the release stated.
The Mena Police Department called Smith’s mother about 10:30 p.m. to tell her that her daughter had escaped from her abductor and she was safe, although she had been battered and needed to go to the hospital.
When Sebastian County sheriff’s investigators traveled to Mena to interview Smith, they learned that she escaped from Brewer at a gas station. She ran to some people in a vehicle and asked them to take her to safety. They drove away with Smith and called the police, the release stated.
Smith told the investigators that Brewer had struck her with objects and choked her before he drove away with her from her Hackett home. She felt that Brewer was going to kill her, the release stated.
Her parents took her home from Mena on Sunday, according to the release.
The case is similar to a June 24 abduction in which a man forced a Van Buren woman at gunpoint into her car at a Fort Smith business and drove her south, robbing and sexually molesting her along the way, according to Fort Smith police.
She later escaped from her captor during a refueling stop at an Ashdown convenience store and took refuge with store customers who called the police.
Her abductor, 37-year-old convicted rapist Ardwin Frank Sylvester DH of Fort Smith, was arrested by Arkansas State Police troopers while driving the woman’s car. He is charged in Sebastian County Circuit Court with kidnapping, aggravated robbery, rape and being a felon in possession of a firearm.