A North Little Rock teenager, accused of shooting up a neighbor's car at his mother's urging, must stand trial as an adult, a Pulaski County Circuit judge ruled Monday after hearing two vastly different accounts of the shooting from two women who say they saw the encounter.
Rakaleon Deavonte Dobbins, now 17, is charged with committing a terroristic act, aggravated assault and misdemeanor possession of a handgun by a minor. He's accused of firing three shots into a car carrying a mother and daughter and threatening a neighbor with the weapon on April 20 in front of his family home at 317 W 20th St. Dobbins, who was 16 at the time, was arrested at the scene.
Dobbins petitioned to have the charges transferred to juvenile court, but at a hearing Monday, Judge Barry Sims sided with deputy prosecutor Sharon Strong, who argued that Dobbins should be tried as adult as he had been charged.
Kaitlan Alexa Capel, 28, who lives across the street from the Dobbinses, told police she saw Dobbins shooting at the car and picked the teen out of a photographic lineup.
She testified that she saw Dobbins' mother in the street arguing with the car's driver, who had just backed out of the yard of the house next door to Capel. Dobbins' mother got on her phone, she said, and Dobbins walked around the home and started shooting at the vehicle as it drove away.
But defense attorney Simmons Smith presented a second woman who said that she saw the shooting and that the driver's brother was the one who shot up the car, apparently as he tried to shoot at Dobbins' mother.
Lusonia Carson, a friend of Dobbins' family, testified that she was visiting Dobbins' grandmother next door, heard a disturbance and witnessed the gunplay when she went outside to see what was going on.
Dobbins was not present during the shooting, she said.
He lives in an apartment behind his grandmother's home next to his mother's house, Carson told the judge. She said that she never before told police what she'd seen because when she approached officers that day, they'd shooed her away.
Carson said Dobbins' mother was in her car in her driveway as a woman armed with a knife beat on the car window.
The knife-wielding woman got on her phone and called someone, saying, "I need you. I need you now," Carson testified.
Moments later a black sport utility vehicle pulled up on the street, and a man she knows as "Jimmy" got out of the car and started shooting, she said.
Dobbins' mother was driving away, and the SUV tried to run her off the road as it drove away, Carson said.
Detective Joe Green told the judge that police had spent hours at the home in the aftermath of the shooting. He testified that he'd never heard anything about someone else being responsible for the gunfire.
Green told the judge the evidence shows that Dobbins fired up to seven shots at the fleeing car and that three of them struck the vehicle.
One bullet fragment went through the trunk and into the car, striking the driver, Demetria Sanette Jackson, in the back, although the projectile did not break the skin, Green testified. Her teenage daughter was also in the car, he said.
Dobbins also pointed the gun at Jackson's mother, 61-year-old Billie Faye Singleton, Green testified.
Investigators collected shell casings from the street and seized a gun found in a heater closet in the Dobbins home, he said. An examination of the weapon has yet to be completed, so Green could not say whether the pistol was the same one used in the shooting.
Police say Dobbins' mother, Danielle Lynette Dobbins, put her son up to the shooting. She is charged with her son along with a count of possession of a firearm by certain persons and misdemeanor charges of evidence tampering and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
Danielle Dobbins, 43, has prior convictions for first-degree battery and second-degree domestic battering.
Court records show that on Dec. 19, 2013, a 3-month-old infant died at the Dobbins home, and state regulators subsequently accused Dobbins of operating an unlicensed day care service in her house. She denied wrongdoing and was never charged.
Regulators with the state Department of Human Services reported that she'd been caught running a day care with six children in her home about seven months earlier but had promised to quit in May 2013 after receiving a cease and desist order from the agency. State law bars Dobbins from caring for any children but her own, regulators stated in court filings.
Metro on 12/11/2018