A Pulaski County Circuit judge Monday declined to reduce the $200,000 bail of a Little Rock murder suspect who most recently has been accused of being a member of a drug-dealing ring.
The drug accusations leveled against 24-year-old Tommie Ice in a federal indictment were not addressed in the hearing before Circuit Judge Herb Wright.
Federal prosecutors have accused Ice of participating in a 25-person cocaine-trafficking ring that operated in the Little Rock area from January 2013 until Sept. 9, two days before the grand jury returned indictments against the accused members.
Ice is charged with 19 others of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine and with two counts of use of a communication facility to facilitate a drug offense.
He's accused of facilitating the acquisition or sale of at least 500 grams, 1.1 pounds, of cocaine and, on subsequent days in April, using a telephone in drug-dealing activity. His first federal court appearance is scheduled for Thursday.
Ice was in the Pulaski County jail on a first-degree murder charge when the indictments were announced last week.
Ice is accused of shooting 25-year-old Leonard Montgomery in April in the parking lot of the Oak Ridge Apartments on Mabelvale Cutoff Road in southwest Little Rock in what police described as an argument between feuding gang members.
According to arrest reports, Montgomery and Ice had argued over a longstanding gang dispute between Ice's "Self Paid Playas" and Montgomery's "Highland Park Pirus/Highland Park Murdamob."
Authorities have not said whether the slaying is connected to the federal charges against Ice.
On Monday, homicide Detective Tommy Hudson told the judge that police are seeking at least one other suspect in the slaying.
He said police collected 15 spent spent casings from two guns; nine from a .45 caliber and six from a .40 caliber; saying the shells were found on the opposite side of the parking lot from where Montgomery was fatally wounded.
Questioned by deputy prosecutor John Hout, the detective testified video surveillance from the apartments shows Montgomery, with three other men, walking away from a group of people when shots were fired.
Montgomery was struck in his right leg and knocked to the ground but was able to roll over and fire a shot back before collapsing.
The casings that police found could not have come from Montgomery's gun because he used a revolver that doesn't eject spent shells, the detective told the judge. He told the judge that Montgomery was also shot in his left lower stomach and died by the time his friends got him to the hospital.
Witnesses placed Ice at the scene, Hudson said, acknowledging that the video is not clear enough to distinguish the faces of the people at the scene.
Once Ice became a suspect, the violent crime apprehension unit and patrol officers searched for him for weeks, but it was not until investigators turned to the U.S. Marshals Service that Ice was arrested on Reservoir Road in June, Hudson told the judge. Defense attorney Cheryl Barnard questioned how much effort authorities had really put into finding Ice.
Testifying on Ice's behalf were Marian Arnett, a teacher at J.A. Fair High School who said Ice has been consulting with her about obtaining his high school diploma, and his mother, Evelyn Click, who told the judge her son was a deeply involved father to his two young children.
After hearing all of the testimony, the judge declined to reduce Ice's bail, saying he thought $200,000 was a reasonable amount. Jail records show Prairie County authorities have placed a hold on his release.
At the time of the slaying, Ice was on probation for drug and gun convictions, court records show.
His most recent conviction was in May 2011 stemming from his September 2010 arrest with another man, 24-year-old Andre Darnell Farrar Jr., in which an illegal sawed-off shotgun and two stolen pistols were found outside the 1998 Chrysler Sebring they were riding in, court records show. Farrar was sentenced to six years in prison for possession of a firearm by a felon.
When he was killed, Montgomery, a father of three with 11 siblings, had been on probation three months on drug charges after he and a woman, 23-year-old Shockalah Danzie, were arrested in February 2013 with marijuana, cocaine, 82 hydrocodone tablets and 44 oxycodone pills in a car parked at 29th and Vancouver streets in Little Rock.
Montgomery, who had a 2008 Texas robbery conviction, accepted a sentence of five years on probation for cocaine and marijuana possession in January while Danzie pleaded guilty to oxycodone possession in October in exchange for five years on probation.
Metro on 09/23/2014