A Little Rock teenager accused of killing a mother in front of her 2-year-old daughter during a robbery must post $250,000 in cash to be released from jail to await trial, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen ruled Thursday.
Prosecutor Amanda Fields called 16-year-old Kevin Williams Jr. a "danger to the community" who seeks out Hispanic victims.
She asked the judge to either deny bail to Williams, who was 15 when he was arrested, or set it at a substantial amount to help guarantee that he will attend court hearings and obey court orders. Fields said she believes that the teen would abscond before trial if he were released.
Williams has been jailed without bail since his February 2016 arrest on a capital murder charge. He's since been charged in two other robberies, including one in which the robber struck a 2-year-old boy and beat the child's father.
Defense attorney Ron Davis argued Thursday for a "reasonable" bail amount of less than $200,000 that the boy's family could afford.
He asked the judge to consider findings by the U.S. Supreme Court and, more recently, the Arkansas Legislature that young people's brains are not fully mature and are subject to difficulties with reasoning and judgment until they reach their early to mid-20s.
Williams faces charges of capital murder, aggravated assault, theft, four counts of aggravated robbery and two counts of second-degree battery.
The judge set bail at $450,000 on the condition that Williams put up $250,000 to be released, an amount Davis said was so high that the judge might as well have denied bond.
"That's tantamount to no bond at all," he said.
"That's my ruling," Griffen responded.
The judge set bail after hearing testimony that Williams' arrest in the homicide case, the robbery of a Hispanic woman holding her child, led detectives to charge him in two other armed robberies, both involving Hispanic victims.
Eunice Lopez Garcia, 27, was fatally shot by one of four men who ambushed her in January 2016 when she walked out of her Keats Drive home carrying her toddler daughter, investigator Tommy Hudson testified.
Police believe from the way she was dressed that Garcia was on her way to church, Hudson told the judge. Witnesses told police that the woman was set upon by the men, with one attempting to take her purse, Hudson said.
When the purse, draped over her shoulder, wouldn't come lose, one assailant started to drag Garcia, causing her to drop the girl, Hudson testified. The robber pulled a gun and shot Garcia in the stomach before fleeing with her purse, Hudson testified.
Witnesses directed police to a nearby home on Chaucer Lane, where the robbers had fled, and officers detained four people inside the residence, one of whom described seeing Williams shoot the woman, Hudson said.
Within a few hours of the slaying, police had sufficient evidence to charge Williams, and he surrendered to police after seeing news accounts identifying him as a suspect, the investigator said.
Williams confessed to the shooting, stating that he shot the woman when she resisted his attempt to take her purse, Hudson told the judge.
"She got up on him -- that's one of the phrases he used -- so he pulled the gun and shot her," Hudson testified, recounting the interview.
Detectives Bobby Martin and Julio Gil told the judge that they and other Robbery Squad detectives were investigating a series of armed holdups of Hispanic people in the area, so they looked at Williams as a potential suspect.
Milton Ramirez, a maintenance worker at the Whispering Hills Mobile Home Park on Chicot Road, was able to pick Williams out of a photo lineup as the gunman who robbed him two days before Garcia was killed, the detectives said.
The robber was accompanied by two other men, but police don't know who they are, Martin told the judge. Williams denied having a gun or participating in the stickup, Martin said.
Williams told police that he was walking with the other two subjects, whom he knew only by their first names, when one of them, upon seeing Ramirez, said he wanted to "hit a lick" on the victim because it was Friday and "they all get paid on Friday," Martin said.
Gil told the judge that Williams also was identified as the robber who clubbed Luis Flores with a pistol and punched his 2-year-old son during an August 2015 ambush-holdup in front of the family's home at 24 Meldia Drive.
Flores had just parked in the driveway and was getting his son of out his car seat in the back of the vehicle when he was assailed from behind by an attacker who also punched the little boy, the detective stated.
Flores' wife, Martiza Estrada, ran for help and was later able to pick Williams out of a police lineup as one of the robbers she saw beat her husband with a gun, Gil told the judge.
Police did not have any leads in the robbery until Estrada contacted investigators in February 2016 to say she recognized the men after seeing their photographs on Facebook, the detective testified.
Another teenager, Ramale Collier, is charged along with Williams in the Meldia Drive holdup and the robbery of Garcia, although the 19-year-old Little Rock man is not charged in her slaying.
Metro on 03/17/2017