Fort Smith felon gets 40-year term

FORT SMITH -- A man was sentenced to more than 40 years in prison Thursday after a Sebastian County Circuit Court jury convicted him of being a felon in possession of a firearm in the kidnapping, robbery and rape of a Van Buren woman last summer.

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The jury of eight women and four men deliberated just seven minutes before recommending the maximum 40-year sentence on the firearms charge for Ardwin Sylvester, 38 of Fort Smith. It took jurors 15 minutes of deliberation to convict him.

Judge J. Michael Fitzhugh followed the jury's recommendation in sentencing Sylvester but also sentenced him to finish serving the 20-year sentence he received in 2000 on a rape conviction, also in Sebastian County, and for which he was on parole. Fitzhugh ordered the sentences to run consecutively.

Fitzhugh told jurors at the start of the trial attorneys in the case stipulated Sylvester had been convicted of a violent felony at the time he used the gun in the kidnapping.

Sylvester is scheduled for trial the week of May 11 in circuit court on charges of kidnapping, aggravated robbery and rape in the woman's abduction.

In his closing arguments in the sentencing phase, deputy prosecutor Scott Houston said Sylvester was eligible for an extended prison sentence because he was convicted of 12 prior felonies.

Those felonies were five thefts, four commercial burglaries and one breaking and entering, all of which occurred in Sebastian County on Sept. 17, 1997; an escape from Miller County on July 21, 1998; and the rape that occurred April 1, 2000.

The Van Buren woman testified during the sentencing phase that, since her ordeal, she has suffered from nightmares, migraine headaches and panic attacks. She said she's under a doctor's care for post-traumatic stress disorder.

If she encounters a man she doesn't know in a store, she said she will go down another aisle to avoid him. She is overly watchful when in public. And if she sees a man with tattoos on his arms, as Sylvester has, she said she has flashbacks.

She also said she had to sell her car about a week after the kidnapping because she found she could not endure sitting in it.

During the innocence/guilt phase of the trial, the woman testified she was getting into her car at the Staples store in Fort Smith on June 24 when Sylvester approached her, threatened her with the gun and hijacked her car. She said as they drove through Fort Smith, he sexually assaulted her at gunpoint.

She said Sylvester, who mostly kept the gun on his lap with the barrel pointed at her, drove them south on U.S. 71 and took her cash from her purse.

When they reached Ashdown, she said, they stopped at a convenience store gas station to refuel. Sylvester threatened to shoot her if she tried to escape while he put gas in the car, she said.

He made her get out of the car to show him how to get access to the gas tank. When she got back in the car, she said she didn't put on her seat belt. When a pickup pulling a trailer pulled up next to the car to buy gas, she bolted out of the car and ran into the store, telling the cashier that Sylvester had kidnapped her and to lock the door so no one would be hurt.

According to police reports, Sylvester jumped into the car and drove away. The police were called and chased Sylvester, during which he threw the gun out of the car before being captured.

Police recovered the weapon, which was introduced into evidence Thursday.

NW News on 04/17/2015

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