Guilty, pleads 1 charged in LR car-lot drug-ring case

One of the main defendants accused of operating a drug-trafficking ring out of a used-car dealership in southwest Little Rock pleaded guilty Thursday to a cocaine distribution charge.

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Christopher Leonard "Lil Joe" Jones, 42, admitted to U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes that on Aug. 5, 2013, he sold 139 grams of a cocaine mixture to a confidential informant for $5,000 in the parking lot of a local Subway restaurant while FBI agents had him under surveillance.

In return for his guilty plea, seven other charges Jones faced were dismissed. They included a drug-trafficking conspiracy charge leading a 62-count indictment handed up Sept. 11 by a federal grand jury. His sentencing has not yet been scheduled.

The indictment named 23 people from 10 Arkansas cities, as well as a Dallas man and an Atlanta woman.

The indictment accuses Jones and Alton Givens, 30, of acting as the two main drug distributors for Freddie Eugene Brewster, 31, who operated the now-closed Brewster's Used Auto & Detail at 6618 Forbing Road, just off University Avenue. The indictment accuses Brewster of importing large amounts of marijuana and cocaine from Texas and distributing them out of his shop, where Jones and Givens were his employees.

In court Thursday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Chris Givens told the judge that in the summer of 2013, FBI agents, acting on tips about drug sales at the car dealership, recorded confidential informants making multiple purchases from Jones and Alton Givens that added up to 3.8 pounds valued at more than $64,000. The sale to which Jones pleaded guilty, through defense attorney David Cannon of Little Rock, was one of those transactions.

Brewster, Alton Givens and 20 other defendants are scheduled for a jury trial in Holmes' court beginning Nov. 30.

One person indicted in the case pleaded guilty May 14 to a charge of using a communication device to commit a crime, and prosecutors dropped charges against another person, citing the "interests of justice."

A third defendant, Tommie Leangelo Ice, 25, also pleaded guilty in May to a charge of conspiring to possess or distribute more than 500 grams -- about a pound -- of cocaine. In return for the plea, federal prosecutors dropped two other charges of using a communication device to facilitate a drug crime.

Two days after Ice was sentenced to five years in federal prison for the drug crime, he accepted a 10-year sentence in Pulaski County Circuit Court on a manslaughter charge for killing a gang rival in 2014. Holmes later determined that the two sentences will be served concurrently -- at the same time.

The manslaughter charge was originally a first-degree murder charge. It stemmed from the April 2014 shooting death of Leonard Montgomery, 25, in an apartment complex parking lot on Mabelvale Cutoff Road.

Metro on 07/31/2015

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