A 23-year-old Little Rock man accepted a 35-year prison sentence Tuesday for fatally shooting a man during an ambush-robbery more than a year ago.
Brandon Montel Nevels pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, reduced from capital murder, and aggravated robbery for the December 2015 slaying of Feron Whitley in southwest Little Rock.
Deputy prosecutor Tonia Acker told sentencing Judge Leon Johnson that Nevels, co-defendant Nautica Champeal Finney of Little Rock, and a third person, had conspired to rob Whitley, 22.
The prosecutor said that during the holdup, Whitley fought back, and Nevels shot him twice, once in the arm and once in the right thigh. Acker said the leg wound was fatal.
Finney, 22, of Little Rock was sentenced to 30 years in prison in August after pleading guilty to robbery, reduced from aggravated robbery. Prosecutors dropped the capital murder charge against her.
Whitley, a North Little Rock father of two, was found dead about a week before Christmas 2015, his pants around his ankles, behind the wheel of his crashed 2012 Dodge Avenger near the entrance gate of the Autumn Park apartments on Warren Drive.
Police found a large amount of bloody money on the floorboard near his feet along with a .40-caliber pistol and a cellphone on the passenger floorboard. Its screen-saver was a photo of Finney.
Finney was used as bait to distract Whitley during the robbery, friends of the defendants told police about six weeks after the slaying. Those witnesses said Nevels and Finney had confided in them about their plans to set up Whitley for a robbery, and told them about the shooting, according to police reports.
The pair targeted Whitley because they knew him to regularly carry a large amount of money and drugs, the witnesses told police.
The defendants had planned for Finney to distract Whitley with sex so he could be ambushed, the witnesses said.
But, Nevels told them that Whitley saw the robbers approaching and was able to get his gun and shoot at them, the witnesses said. Finney told them that she ran because she thought Nevels was trying to kill her, witnesses told police.
Whitley sped off in his vehicle, but it crashed before leaving the apartment complex, witnesses told police.
Finney will have to serve at least 15 years before she can be released from prison.
Nevels will have to serve more than 24 years before he can qualify for parole.
Under the plea agreement negotiated by his attorneys, Lott Rolfe and Bret Qualls, prosecutors dropped habitual-offender sentencing enhancements that would have kept Nevels from qualifying for early release.
Court records show that he has four previous felony convictions for residential burglary and attempted residential burglary.
Metro on 01/19/2017