A 22-year-old North Little Rock man has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for killing a neighbor.
Juwon Rashad "Cheese" Cooper pleaded guilty March 31 in Pulaski County Circuit Court to second-degree murder, reduced from first-degree murder, for the May 2014 slaying of Corey Renard Britt, 42, according to sentencing papers filed on Thursday.
Britt, a father of one, was found dead under a pile of dirty clothes on the living room floor of his Rose Lane home.
His brother discovered his body when he went in search of him because he hadn't heard from Britt for about a day, a neighbor told reporters.
Britt had been shot in the head and neck, and stabbed twice in the neck, once in the back and once in the right side, court files show. He also had superficial cuts and blunt-force injuries.
Police followed a trail of bloody shoe prints through two other bedrooms in the house, finding a bloody knife in one room and an open and empty safe in the closet of another, court filings show.
A witness reported seeing someone named Cheese running through the field across the street from the Britt home with a bloody shirt, and detectives determined Cheese to be Cooper.
Testing on the knife found both men's DNA.
Cooper was arrested three months after the slaying at his home on Greenlea Drive, which is about a third of a mile from the Britt home.
Metro on 04/09/2016