HOT SPRINGS -- The Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to reimburse the Hot Springs Advertising and Promotion Commission nearly $13,000 for the cost it incurred to clean up a mercury spill after a wreck on one of its parking lots in May.
The driver of the vehicle, Dakota Avants of Pine Bluff, was sentenced last month in Hot Spring County Circuit Court to 20 years in prison on each of two counts of second-degree murder, to run consecutively for a total of 40 years, for the deaths of his two passengers.
According to an amended criminal information report filed with the circuit court Feb. 1, Avants was fleeing from a Hot Spring County deputy when he crashed a 2009 Mitsubishi Galant in a parking lot owned by the Advertising Commission on Malvern Avenue.
According to a court document The Sentinel-Record obtained in August, Avants was a suspect in a burglary in Cleveland County that involved the theft of 200 pounds of elemental mercury from the son of a deceased dentist.
The mercury was packaged in 10 pint-size to quart-size jars with cork lids, the affidavit said.
Avants, when interviewed July 3 by a Cleveland County sheriff's office investigator at the Jefferson County jail in Pine Bluff, denied having anything to do with the burglary involving the mercury, according to the affidavit. He claimed the mercury was already in the Galant when the two fatality victims and a third person arrived to pick him up the morning of May 16.
Avants was charged initially in Hot Spring County with two counts of first-degree murder after the two passengers in the vehicle, Kersha L. Arrington, 32, and Ashley Nicole Whittington, 30, both of Pine Bluff, died from their injuries.
Avants was set to stand trial this month, but he pleaded guilty to the lesser felony under a plea agreement Jan. 26. He also must pay $150 in court costs and a $2,500 fine.
The amended affidavit filed Feb. 1 in Hot Spring County said Avants admitted fleeing because his driver's license was suspended, and because he was trying to impress Arrington and Whittington. He estimated he was traveling approximately 130 mph when he wrecked.
After developing Avants as a suspect in the burglary in Cleveland County, along with three other Pine Bluff men, the affidavit obtained last summer said the investigator learned May 24 that Avants had been involved in a wreck in Hot Springs and that some of the mercury may have been in the vehicle.
The investigator contacted the Hot Springs Fire Department and received two reports, one of which showed that mercury was "observed scattered all over the ground and parking lot area."
The investigator later contacted the special agent for the Arkansas State Police who was in charge of the Hot Springs investigation to advise him that state police officers may have been contaminated with mercury while working the scene of the wreck, and that there was "possible liquid mercury spilled in the vehicle that Avants was driving the night of the accident."
The special agent later told the investigator that he had obtained a search warrant for the Galant and discovered "busted containers containing liquid mercury in the vehicle. The vehicle was then quarantined."
The Advertising Commission hired Waste Services Inc. of Little Rock to clean up the spill, at a cost of $12,938.29. Regions Bank donated the parking lot, located at the corner of Malvern Avenue and Church Street, to the Advertising Commission in April. The lot previously served as an overflow lot for Regions' main branch.
Steve Arrison, CEO of Visit Hot Springs, the convention and visitors bureau operated by the Advertising Commission, initially called in the Hot Springs Fire Department when the mercury was first discovered and later hired the environmental company to dispose of the toxic metal.
The award comes out of the EPA's Local Governments Reimbursement Program, which according to the EPA provides a "safety net" of up to $25,000 per incident to local governments that do not have the funds available to pay for cleaning up hazardous substances.
State Desk on 02/19/2017