Correction: Prosecutors dropped a capital-murder charge against Detric Wilson in 1993, when he was still a minor. An incorrect reference to the disposition of the charge and the year was contained in this article. The article also incorrectly referred to Wilson’s plea in a 2011 burglary of the same discount store. He pleaded no contest in October to one charge of commercial burglary and seven counts of theft by receiving. Despite a three-year prison sentence, he was released upon conviction because he had already spent most of the sentence in jail.
A Little Rock man faces felony charges after he spent a night in a discount store, police said, and walked out the next morning with thousands of dollars in stolen jewelry.
Again.
Little Rock detectives arrested Detric Wilson late Thursday morning and charged him with several felonies in the Dec. 12 commercial burglary of the Kmart at 10901 N. Rodney Parham Road. Detectives said Wilson hid inside the store the night before and stole about $120,000 in jewelry from the business’s display case.
That arrest came nearly three years after he was arrested and charged with doing the same thing at the same store in January 2011. Wilson negotiated a guilty plea in that burglary, in which detectives said he spent a night in the closed store, broke through the jewelry’s glass display case at 5 a.m. Jan. 3, 2011, and ran out of the store with $90,000 in jewelry.
He remained Tuesday at the Pulaski County jail, where he was being held in lieu of $50,000 bond.
Police first went to the Little Rock store at 7 a.m. Dec. 12, when store staff members said a man had just cut through the three locks on the jewelry case and run off with the goods.
Detectives reviewed surveillance footage from the night before and watched a “suspicious” man scope out the jewelry case before walking into the sports department, where he grabbed a rain jacket and pellet gun package before disappearing from the camera, according to a police affidavit.
Police found the jacket and pellet gun, which were stashed in the business’s “electrical room … presumably [where] the suspect hid after the business closed,” according to the affidavit.
Wilson’s fingerprints were on the pellet gun.
The detective working the case remembered the 2011 burglary of “the exact same business” using the “exact same modus [operandi]” for which Wilson was prosecuted and jailed, according to the affidavit.
Knowing the suspect’s name, the detective used LeadsOnline - an Internet database used by law enforcement officials to track pawnshop transactions - and found Wilson made several lucrative stops hours after the Kmart burglary.
Wilson sold gold necklaces to pawnshops in North Little Rock and a $10,000 diamond ring to Arch Street Pawn at 11602 Arch St. in Little Rock.
Employees identified Wilson as the seller, and Kmart staff members confirmed the items were the ones stolen.
In 2011, sales at pawnshops tipped police to Wilson, who tried to unload Kmart’s stolen jewelry as well as $40,000 stolen from a local Sam’s Club.
When confronted by detectives with surveillance video after the 2011 burglaries, Wilson told detectives, “That looks like me,” according to court records.
Although charges in the 2011 burglaries were filed in early 2011, the case was prolonged by several requests for mental-health examinations of Wilson. Shortly after his arrest in 2011, family members petitioned the court to commit Wilson to the State Hospital.
According to the petition filed by his brother, Wilson “has locked everyone out” and had been “anti sociable.”
“He was defecating in trash bags instead of the commode. He has dog feces in the home as well. His home was unlivable,” according to the complaint.
Wilson was committed to the State Hospital for 45 days.
He petitioned for a mental-health examination, and after several delays, the court asked the Department of Human Services to keep Wilson in its custody until he was treated and fit for trial.
According to Wilson’s mental evaluation, he had been in and out of incarceration since he was 15, when after getting involved in gangs, he was tried as an adult and convicted of capital murder in the January 1992 killing of Kenneth McKeever over $3 in cash and a 40-ounce bottle of beer.
The “ReRe” tattooed under his right eye is a reference to the Egyptian sun god “Ra” or “Re,” according to interviews with evaluators, and Wilson showed signs of “overly religious thinking.”
According to interviews, Wilson was well-schooled in both the Bible and Koran and said he had a “third eye,” figuratively, that gave him a heightened ability “to see the truth.”
Staff concluded that though Wilson had demonstrated signs of mental-health issues in the past, his examinations and answers were inconsistent with being inculpable for his actions.
Wilson’s thinking was “better explained as the thinking of an individual with a criminal history who wished to avoid further incarceration and believed his legal issues were the result of his being a victim of society acting against him,” court records said.
He was found fit for trial in July and on Oct. 29, he pleaded guilty to one count of commercial burglary and seven felony counts of theft by receiving.
That day, Wilson was sentenced to three years in prison. But by the time he was sentenced, he had served most of that time in jail, and the court gave him credit for time served. He was released from jail that day.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 01/01/2014