The 87-year-old North Little Rock man accused in a February rampage with a crowbar that injured his landlord and two other women has been indefinitely hospitalized so state doctors can determine whether he will ever be fit to stand trial.
Charles James Warren is charged with first-degree battery and two counts of second-degree battery.
He's accused of ambushing the three women -- Wilma Salazar, Deborah Harris and Emma Coleman -- with the tool at the Sarah Daisy Garden apartment complex where he has been a tenant for 20 years, court filings show.
Salazar, the apartment manager, was bleeding heavily from two large cuts to her head and barely conscious when North Little Rock police arrived at the West Pershing Boulevard apartments, an arrest report shows.
Warren faces further charges of aggravated assault and terroristic threatening because, police say, Warren threatened to kill another man on the property, Jesse Abernathy Jr., with the pry bar.
Warren also broke out two windows in the apartment office and struck at least six vehicles in the parking lot with the tool, including the victims' cars and two others, court filings show.
Police arrived to see Warren wielding the crowbar in an "aggressive manner," and when he failed to obey orders delivered at gunpoint to drop the bar and surrender, police forced him to the ground, the report said.
The charges together carry a potential 56-year prison sentence, but an examination by state doctors, acting at the request of Warren's attorney Pat Aydelott, diagnosed him in June with a neurocognitive disorder, reporting that he was unable to assist in his own defense.
The psychological report compiled by Ed Stafford stated that Warren couldn't complete testing due to his confusion and that Warren didn't know what day it was when he was examined.
Doctors couldn't be sure whether Warren was in his right mind when the women were attacked, so he was committed to the State Hospital by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Barry Sims for doctors to determine whether he could ever be made well enough to stand trial.
He is due back in court next May at the latest for a report on his treatment. But on Monday, hospital officials asked the judge for permission to move Warren, who was using a wheelchair, to an assisted living facility.
The judge rejected the request after prosecutors argued that they preferred Warren, who turns 88 in about three weeks, be kept in a more secure environment.
According to Stafford's four-page psychological report, Warren told doctors he was born in Dumas and dropped out of school in the fifth grade to chop cotton. He said he has three or five daughters and moved to Chicago sometime in the 1940s, where he served a three-year prison sentence for robbing a restaurant.
He told the doctor that he moved back to Arkansas in 1996 to be closer to a sister who lives in Woodson and that he had worked at a Kroger for about 15 years. Warren said he was living on Social Security and spent his days watching TV although he is mostly blind, according to the report.
Asked about the accusations against him, his version of events did not match anything police or witnesses reported, the report states.
Warren said that he remembered taking some cough medicine, then finding himself in a police car.
Metro on 08/10/2016