A 35-year-old Little Rock man who said he had to shoot his friend to save himself, two women and two children has been sentenced to five years in prison for throwing away the gun he used.
Cortez Antonio Bone told Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen at Thursday's sentencing hearing that he had to protect himself, the women and toddlers inside his Collie Drive home from a rampaging Marlon Kenta Walker last June.
Walker was shooting into the house, Bone told the judge. He said he didn't know why Walker was shooting at him.
"My friend was trying to kill us," Bone told the judge, describing how Walker was shooting through the windows into the house. "I was just trying to make sure we stayed alive."
A̶ ̶p̶o̶l̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶p̶o̶r̶t̶ ̶s̶h̶o̶w̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶t̶w̶o̶ ̶w̶o̶m̶e̶n̶ ̶w̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶h̶o̶u̶s̶e̶,̶ ̶A̶k̶i̶k̶a̶ ̶P̶e̶r̶k̶i̶n̶s̶,̶ ̶3̶2̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶L̶a̶t̶o̶s̶h̶a̶ ̶B̶e̶c̶k̶,̶ ̶3̶6̶,̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶y̶ ̶d̶i̶d̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶l̶i̶v̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶.̶
A police report shows that one woman Latosha Beck, 36, was at the house, and that Akika Perkins arrived after, but that neither woman lived there.*
Bone testified that he was wrong to dispose of the gun after the shooting, but said he acted without thinking in the emotional aftermath of the exchange of gunfire.
Bone, who was on parole at the time of the shooting, testified that he threw the weapon off an overpass. Police never found it.
Bone had left the house by the time police arrived to investigate calls about a shooting. Officers found Walker fatally wounded in the front yard.
A married father of three, Walker, 36, had been in trouble with the law before. Court records show he was sentenced to 22 years in prison in 1998 after pleading guilty to aggravated robbery in White County and robbery in Phillips County.
Police arrested Bone in the slaying, but prosecutors only charged him with evidence tampering. He pleaded guilty in January in exchange for prosecutors dropping a charge of felon in possession of a firearm.
His parole was revoked in September, and his attorney asked the judge for a one-year sentence that would run concurrently with his prison time. Bone is due for a parole hearing in June.
"He did what he did to stay alive," his attorney, Don Thompson, told the judge.
Thompson suggested that the judge could impose a suspended sentence to follow Bone's prison time along with any conditions the judge thought necessary to help keep Bone on the straight and narrow. The judge did add a five-year suspended sentence for Bone to serve once he's released from prison.
Bone's mother, 50-year-old Cathy Slay, tearfully pleaded with the judge for leniency. She described her oldest son as a "wonderful" man and father of three who had gotten "mixed up with the wrong crowd" when he was younger.
But he had turned his life around in recent years, she said.
Bone was her sole caretaker after she had undergone back surgeries, which sometimes required that he carry her, Slay testified.
"We just need him back home. I need my child," she told the judge. "We did raise him to be mannerful ... to have respect and morals."
Slay told the judge that the disciplined upbringing she and her husband had imposed on Bone as a child was partially to blame for the poor choices he's made in the past.
"We're so strict, and when he saw that lifestyle, he got so excited ... and got on the wrong track," she said. "He's always gotten himself into trouble trying to protect others."
Deputy prosecutor Kim Woods disputed that assertion, telling the judge that Bone's criminal history, which includes convictions for armed robbery and drug dealing, proves otherwise. She told the judge that Bone has actually demonstrated a pattern of escalating criminal activity.
She also scoffed at the suggestion that Bone should get any consideration for cooperating with police, which his attorney had urged.
Bone was arrested after a three-day police manhunt that ended when officers found him hiding under a blanket in the back seat of his brother's car during a traffic stop. Calvin Slay III, 30, was driving and was arrested, but was released without charges.
Griffen said there was no excuse for getting rid of the gun and imposed the prison term in accord with sentencing guidelines.
"Even if you had to use a gun to protect yourself and others, you didn't have to hide the gun," the judge said.
Griffen acknowledged Bone's mother's grief, but said her son's past does not show him to be the man she thinks he is.
"While I am moved by Ms. Slay's testimony, I must respectfully disagree," Griffen said. "Ms. Slay's son appears to have a history of not only being in the wrong place, but also doing the wrong thing."
Court records show Bone was first convicted of a felony, aggravated assault, in 2003 -- after he shot at Dantrelle Andre Banks, then 17, as part of an ongoing feud with Banks and other men, about 10 days before Christmas in 2002.
In November 2003, while on probation, he robbed Labine Stephens in Little Rock by threatening to shoot him, then pleaded guilty to robbery, reduced from aggravated robbery, in September 2004. He was sentenced to five years in prison along with a suspended five-year term.
While on parole in July 2006, he and two other men were arrested in Sherwood with cocaine by police investigating drug dealing. He was out on bail in September 2007 when he was arrested in a holdup at the Little Rock Pizza Hut on Cantrell Road at gunpoint.
He was subsequently sentenced to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to aggravated robbery and cocaine-trafficking charges. The men arrested with him in the cocaine case, Patrick Earl Robinson, now 36, and Mario Shelton, now 36, were also convicted and sent to prison.
Bone had quit working at the Pizza Hut a week before the robbery, police reported.He was there to return his work shirt when he put a gun to the head of restaurant manager Lance Whitecotton to make him turn over the cash. Bone's cousin Chris Slay, who also worked for Pizza Hut, was one of the employees who identified him to police.
Bone was arrested during a drug raid in December 2001 along with three others at 1607 E. 15th St., where officers found crack cocaine, marijuana, scales and a gun. Charges against Bone were dropped, but the other three -- Michael Kanard Jones, 41, Bryan Kent Kingsby, 56, and Diana Kendricks, 40 -- all pleaded guilty to drug charges.
Court records further show that when Bone was 17, in August 1998, he was convicted in juvenile court of breaking or entering and criminal mischief for breaking into cars at a Little Rock motel with another boy. Bone was sentenced to juvenile incarceration, with sentencing papers stating that he was involved in gang activity, refused to obey rules at home and had an "extensive" criminal history in Mississippi.
Metro on 04/04/2017
*CORRECTION: Akika Perkins, 33, of Little Rock arrived at 9700 Collie Drive in Little Rock on June 27 after Marlon Kenta Walker, 36, had been fatally shot outside the home. A previous version of this article incorrectly stated Perkins’ location at the time of the shooting.