Bail was set at $245,000 on Monday for a 30-year-old Little Rock man who police say can be seen on surveillance video shooting two men at a city convenience store.
But Pulaski County jail records show federal authorities have a no-bail hold, at least temporarily, on Andre Demetrious Smalley for a May indictment on two counts of felon in possession of a firearm.
The federal charges are related to the Little Rock police investigation into the April shooting at Our Community Market on Wright Avenue that wounded 21-year-old Anthony Atkins and 22-year-old Javian Booth.
Little Rock police stopped Smalley's car that night and found a pistol in the vehicle, but the five-time convicted felon was released with only a traffic ticket.
Police declined to arrest Smalley immediately because Booth and Atkins declined to cooperate with investigators.
But detectives sought a warrant for his arrest over the gun, and when he was arrested five days later, police reported finding an AR-15 rifle in his trunk.
He was indicted on the gun charges, with a trial tentatively set for the end of June. State prosecutors charged him with two counts of first-degree battery over the shooting allegations.
At the time of his most recent arrest, April 10, Smalley was already awaiting trial over accusations he robbed a Little Rock man in his home in January 2014 and had been illegally carrying a gun in July 2014.
Deputy prosecutor Erin Driver asked Pulaski County Circuit Judge Herb Wright to consider setting bail as high as $450,000, describing Smalley as a danger to the community and noting that he's accused of possessing a gun on four different occasions over the 15-month period leading up to his April arrest. Wright ordered Smalley held without bail last month.
Defense attorney Jason Kordsmeier requested much lower bail, questioning whether prosecutors will be able to convict Smalley on the robbery charge because his accuser in that case, musician T.C. Edwards, is dead.
Kordsmeier also questioned the legality of the police searches that led to the federal indictments, saying that police might not have had sufficient evidence to search Smalley's car when officers reported finding the guns.
Court records show Smalley has a federal conviction for felon in possession of a firearm for a June 2003 arrest in Little Rock in which police found him with a revolver.
In 2002, Smalley accepted a three-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to escape and second-degree battery charges. Court records show he assaulted a guard, inflicting a wound requiring stitches to the man's head, while escaping from the county juvenile detention facility in August 2001, 10 days after his 17th birthday.
Smalley surrendered two days after the escape and told authorities that another juvenile detainee had talked him into it.
Metro on 06/02/2015