North Little Rock man gets life term for '13 burglary, assault

Elliott Finch
Elliott Finch

A 39-year-old North Little Rock man was sentenced to life in prison for breaking into his ex-girlfriend's home and threatening the Jacksonville woman with a gun, although a Pulaski County jury could not decide whether Elliott Harold Finch Jr. held her against her will.

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Jurors found Finch guilty last week of aggravated residential burglary, aggravated assault on a household member and first-degree terroristic threatening after a two-day trial before Circuit Judge Leon Johnson, deputy prosecutor Jayme Butts-Hall said.

Jurors could not reach the required unanimous verdict on a kidnapping charge Thursday, so the judge declared a mistrial on that count, she said.

Prosecutors will announce whether they'll retry Finch on that charge next month, when he is scheduled for trial in two other cases.

Finch, formerly of Jonesboro, is charged with failure to register as a sex offender in one case.

He also faces charges of aggravated assault on a household member and first-degree terroristic threatening, involving the same Jacksonville woman, 40-year-old Roshondra Wesley.

Finch's life sentence on the aggravated burglary charge, a Class Y felony, was automatic because he has convictions for violent crime stemming from his May 2005 abduction of his toddler daughter and her mother in Jonesboro.

In the case that the jury decided Thursday, Finch was arrested Aug. 23, 2013, after Wesley called police to report that he had held her at gunpoint in her home while her children, an 18-year-old man and a 9-year-old girl, slept in their rooms.

Wesley said she was in the shower around 11 p.m. when Finch walked into the bathroom with a pistol, telling her that if she screamed or made any noise, he'd kill all of them.

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Wesley said she sat on her bed while Finch paced back and forth and accused her of ruining his life by setting the police on him. Officers had gone to his workplace looking for him, he told her.

She told Finch whatever he wanted to hear to try and calm him down, she told police. After about four hours, he put down the weapon and they went to sleep, court filings show.

Finch let her leave the house the next morning, about seven hours later, when she persuaded him to let her go to work and take her 9-year-old daughter to school.

She drove to Excell Park with her daughter and called the police.

Officers cordoned off her home, entered the house to rescue her son, Rashaad Nelson, and persuaded Finch to surrender, according to the reports.

Investigators believe he broke a window in the master bedroom to get into the home. They found a pistol with a laser sight, like Wesley had described, behind a dresser in the room.

Once in custody, Finch told police that Wesley had abducted him off the street at gunpoint because she believed he was involved with another woman.

She took him to her home and told him that she planned to kill him, he told police, adding that she had planned to say she had to shoot him to protect herself, reports state.

He said she'd just left the room when police called to tell him that officers had surrounded the home.

Court records show that Jacksonville police had been looking for Finch, who is a registered sex offender, since July 29, 2013, after learning that he had reported moving from his registered residence, 5 Santiago Drive in North Little Rock, to Wesley's home on Ruth Ann Drive.

Finch was ineligible to live there since it is within 2,000 feet of a school, and he had not registered his new home with Jacksonville police, court filings show.

He was required to register as a sex offender because of a December 1998 first-degree sexual abuse conviction, reduced from rape, in Craighead County. He was sentenced to three years in prison, court files show. Details of the case were not available.

The charges Fitch faces in January stem from Aug. 4, 2013, when, Wesley said, Finch had locked her in the bedroom and body slammed her on the bed after an argument, according to court files.

Finch also held a pillow over her face, trying to smother her, the woman said.

She said she kicked Finch off her.

He then put a box-cutter to her neck, stating, "B***h, if I didn't love you so much I'd kill you."

He eventually left the home, taking her cellphone with him, according to the court files.

In May 2006, Finch was sentenced to 15 years in prison after being convicted at trial of theft, terroristic threatening, domestic battering and two counts of kidnapping in Craighead County for the abduction of his daughter, then 3, and the girl's mother, Denitra Forrest, from the woman's Jonesboro home.

Forrest had ended their relationship and begun dating another man, police said at the time.

During a struggle for a knife in Finch's car, Forrest was stabbed in the right leg and nearly lost two fingers on her right hand before getting out of the car near Paragould and running to a nearby home to get help, police said.

About 17 hours later, Finch left the toddler at a Jonesboro convenience store in the middle of the night after calling his sister to come get the girl. He surrendered 29 hours later.

Finch was already being sought by police at the time for an earlier altercation with Forrest. He ultimately pleaded guilty to false imprisonment, domestic battering and aggravated assault on a household member in that case.

Metro on 12/06/2016

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