A 23-year-old man who killed a romantic rival behind a west Little Rock restaurant has been sentenced to 19 years in prison for first-degree murder.
Sentencing papers filed Friday in Pulaski County Circuit Court show Brandon Deon Sanders Moore pleaded guilty April 28 in exchange for the sentence, which will be followed by an 11-year suspended sentence. Prosecutors also dropped a related firearm charge.
Moore will have to serve more than 13 years behind bars before he can qualify for parole for the April 2015 slaying of Cortez Ferrell. The victim, a 26-year-old father of two, was a waiter at the Cracker Barrel restaurant in the Shackleford Crossing shopping center on South Shackleford Road.
One of two co-workers who witnessed the killing identified Moore as the man behind the wheel of a light blue Lincoln Town Car who had argued with Ferrell before shooting him and fleeing.
Moore's girlfriend, a Cracker Barrel waitress, told police her boyfriend drove a car like that and that he had texted her about Ferrell the day of the shooting.
A neighbor of Moore's also told police that Moore had texted him about shooting a man at the Cracker Barrel who had been "messing with his girl" and that he had gotten scared when the man approached him to fight.
Another Cracker Barrel worker said Ferrell had pointed out the Lincoln to her the night he was killed. She told police that Ferrell and Moore had been "having words" over the girlfriend earlier.
Moore's guilty plea to Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen came two days after the judge rejected defense accusations that police had attempted to manipulate the identifying witness into picking Moore out of a photographic lineup.
Moore had convictions for marijuana and drug paraphernalia possession stemming from his September 2012 arrest with another man that had been prompted by complaints to police about men trying to sell drugs to a child in the Fairfield Apartments on Green Mountain Drive in Little Rock.
There were 14 small bags of marijuana and a gun in the vehicle in which Moore and the second man were found, court filings show.
Metro on 05/19/2016