Suspects in 2-year-old's shooting have long rap sheets

Counts in girl’s death not 1st felonies

Larry Jackson
Larry Jackson

The two young men accused of killing a 2-year-old girl are no strangers to Little Rock police, and both have been accused of violent crimes before, court records show.

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Pulaski County sheriff's office

Deshaun Rushing, 21, of Little Rock

Larry James Jackson Jr. already had two felony convictions before he turned 17 in February. Records show he's been under court supervision at least since he was 13, and he has at least two felony cases pending, with possibly a third in Texas.

Deshaun Malik Rushing, 21, was warned against taking up a life of crime when he was 17 by a Pulaski County circuit judge who told him "you aren't a smart criminal. This is not the life for you."

He has since been convicted of cocaine possession and is awaiting trial on charges that include aggravated assault on police officers.

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Photos by Ryan Tarinelli

Jackson and Rushing were arrested last week in the killing of Ramiya Reed just before Thanksgiving, after police obtained capital-murder warrants for them Tuesday.

The pair are jailed without bail and their arrest affidavits are sealed, so no further details of the case have been disclosed. Prosecutors now have two months to decide whether to pursue formal charges against them. As in all criminal cases, suspects are presumed innocent until proved guilty in court.

Rushing's and Jackson's arrests come six months after Ramiya was shot dead in the car she, her mother and other relatives were riding in on South Harrison Street.

Police said the toddler was an innocent victim in an escalating feud between gang families, and detectives had complained they were having a hard time getting witnesses to cooperate even with a $50,000 reward available for the capture and conviction of the girl's killer.

Previous arrests of Larry Jackson, Deshaun Rushing

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Photos by Pulaski County sheriff's office

Rushing surrendered to police Wednesday. On Friday, he was charged with an additional felony of furnishing prohibited articles after jailers reported finding marijuana on him, court records show.

In April, Rushing was wounded in a drive-by shooting on Park Lane that killed 60-year-old Shirley Ann Jackson.

The mother of three and grandmother of 12 operated an unlicensed day care in her home and was caring for nine children when she was shot. Police said Shirley Jackson was an innocent bystander hit by a bullet meant for someone else.

Aside from the capital-murder charge, Rushing is also facing charges from a Feb. 16 arrest after police say he rammed a stolen 2006 purple Chevrolet Cobalt he was driving into two police cars, then fled from the officers, court filings show

The Cobalt had been reported stolen five days earlier outside the Doublebee's Exxon at 8601 Fourche Dam Pike*. The owner told police she left the car running while she ran inside.

Members of the police Violent Crime Apprehension Team had gotten a tip the car, with three men inside, was in the area. When officers caught up to the car, stopped at Lewis and 27th streets, they tried to box it in between two patrol cars, according to an arrest report

After ramming the police vehicles, the Cobalt sped away, but not before police could see Rushing was driving, according to court filings. A second man in the car was recognized as Deauntae Eason, 23, according to reports.

The three men in the car bailed out of it in the 2900 block of Jackson Street. One man got away, but police chased down and arrested Eason and Rushing. There were two guns in the car, one of them stolen, and Rushing had a small amount of marijuana on him, a police report states.

Eason is scheduled to stand trial Thursday on a misdemeanor fleeing count in Little Rock District Court.

Rushing, who is charged with four felonies, including two counts of aggravated assault on a police officer, is set to stand trial in September.

Rushing has been on probation since September when he pleaded guilty to cocaine and marijuana-trafficking charges stemming from his April 30, 2016, arrest at the Arvest Bank branch at 4400 W. Markham St.

Police had been called to the bank to investigate a possible holdup. A teller reported a customer, 62-year-old John David Stevens, had just handed him a withdrawal slip with the message "I'm being robbed" written on it. Stevens had entered the bank with Rushing, according to a police report.

Stevens told the officers that he'd been forced into a 2011 black Mercedes by Rushing and two other men he did not know. They never showed him a weapon, but he went with them out of fear for his safety, he said.

The men wanted him to withdraw $350, and the first banks they tried were closed, Stevens said.

But Stevens changed his story about what had happened several times, a police report states.

Eventually, the officers came to understand that whatever had happened began in North Little Rock, so detectives there joined the investigation.

Rushing told the officers that Stevens owed him money and that he hadn't forced the older man do anything. Rushing was never charged in connection with Stevens' allegations, but he was arrested on the drug charges after he turned over the marijuana and cocaine to police.

That arrest came three years after Circuit Judge Leon Johnson warned a teenage Rushing against taking up a life of crime.

Rushing had been arrested in October 2012, almost three weeks after he turned 17, on accusations that he had participated in ambushing two bank customers in separate holdups that September at a Regions Bank ATM on Rodney Parham Road.

He already had juvenile convictions for refusing to submit to arrest and criminal trespass after an incident at a Little Rock movie theater that year.

Now he faced two counts of aggravated robbery, for which he was charged by prosecutors as an adult after he admitted participating in the robberies. He told detectives he had been the lookout for the gunman who was teaching him how to be a robber.

Police testified that Rushing had not even gotten a share of the holdup proceeds because the gunman didn't think Rushing had contributed enough to the robberies to get a share.

With police testimony that Rushing had been repentant and truthful with officers, and evidence that he'd been getting good grades in school, including algebra, the judge agreed to transfer the charges to juvenile court, with the condition that if he had not been rehabilitated by the time he turned 21, he could be sent to prison on the charges.

"I hope you take advantage of this," Johnson told him in July 2013. "You've gotten a break. What you do with it is up to you."

His co-defendant

Larry Jackson, Rushing's co-defendant in Ramiya's killing, was 14 on Oct. 23, 2014, when he was charged as an adult with aggravated robbery and felony theft.

Jackson was accused of carjacking 55-year-old Vicki Jett in the parking lot of the shopping center at 7801 Cantrell Road a day earlier.

Court records show that Jackson and his family were living at the Villas on Cantrell apartments at 8101 Cantrell Road at the time.

Jett told police she had parked her 2014 Subaru Crosstrek and opened the car door but didn't get out immediately because she was organizing her things. A man walked up from the street and pointed a revolver at her, demanding her keys and car, which he took and left.

When Jackson was arrested the next day, after leading police on a foot chase, he was carrying a revolver, an arrest report said.

Court records show Jackson was on juvenile probation at the time, but do not show what the charges were.

He spent two months in jail before working out a plea deal with prosecutors that allowed him in February 2015 to plead guilty to felony theft and misdemeanor gun possession, serve a term in the state's Division of Youth Services lockup and spend five years on probation.

A condition of his incarceration was that his release was up to Circuit Judge Herb Wright and that Jackson had to show he had been rehabilitated before he could be released, court filings show.

He spent more than eight months in the juvenile lockup before Wright allowed his release in November 2015 after a hearing.

But almost six months later, in April 2016, he and another teen, 17-year-old Reginald Ahmand Briggs Jr. of Little Rock, were arrested in the middle of the night in a $50,000 Ford Mustang that had been stolen the previous night.

Charged with theft by receiving, the 16-year-old Jackson pleaded guilty in September 2016 in exchange for five years on probation. Briggs also pleaded guilty for a 10-year prison sentence that included an unrelated robbery charge.

Court records show Jackson's next arrest came Nov. 30, 2016, in Sherwood, where he was arrested in connection with a January 2016 car theft. Details of those allegations weren't immediately available.

Court records also show he was arrested Feb. 18 of this year in Texas on a theft of a firearm charge, but details of the accusations and where he was arrested in that state also were not immediately available.

On April 19, he was arrested again after Little Rock police say he led officers on a car chase that ended at a North Little Rock apartment complex at 4418 Lynn Lane, which is Jackson's most recent address.

During the pursuit, which began in the 4600 block of West 25th Street, the pursuing officer reported seeing what appeared to be a large bag of marijuana, a small bag of crack cocaine and two pistols thrown from the fleeing car, according to police reports.

Jackson was the driver, but there were four other teenagers in the car, three of whom were arrested with Jackson on charges of possession of drugs and stolen property: Nykian Raines, 19; and sisters Daviana Jamara Dean, 18, and Desare Jamia Dean, 19, court filings show.

SundayMonday on 05/28/2017

*CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misidentified the Doublebee's Exxon at 8601 Fourche Dam Pike.

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