Little Rock records first homicide of 2018; victim shot in throat at apartment complex parking lot

Little Rock saw its first homicide of the new year Monday after a man was fatally shot at an apartment complex, authorities said.

Officers were called to the Eastview Terrace Apartments, 1200 Geyer St., about 2:20 p.m. for a report of a shooting, according to an online dispatch log. While en route, police were told the victim had been taken from the apartment complex in a white vehicle, said Lt. Michael Ford, a department spokesman.

Police stopped the vehicle near the intersection of East 15th and College streets, a few blocks away from the apartment complex, he said. Authorities then found the shooting victim, who was a passenger in the vehicle, Ford reported.

Emergency medical personnel took the victim to the UAMS Medical Center, where he died from his injuries.

The department did not identify the victim Monday. Police say the shooting occurred in the parking lot of the east Little Rock apartment complex.

The motive for the killing was unclear Monday evening.

“This is still early on in the investigation, and the detectives are out interviewing witnesses and trying to gain any information they can,” Ford said.

A resident, who declined to give her name, arrived at the complex Monday afternoon to find crime scene tape stretched across the parking lot and a flurry of detectives and police units. She said she wondered what would have happened if kids returning home from school had been walking through the parking lot when the gunfire began.

“I don’t let my kids come out by themselves,” she said.

Blocks away, crime scene tape surrounded a white four-door car that sat next to a patch of blood-covered concrete. Crime scene technicians took pictures and placed bright yellow evidence tags near the vehicle.

The killing was at least the third reported shooting in Little Rock on Monday. A 40-year-old woman was shot in the buttocks in southwest Little Rock, Ford said.

A dispatch log shows officers were called to CHI St. Vincent Infirmary shortly after 9 a.m. Monday. Ford said the woman was shot outside a house in the 7800 block of Preston Drive and she arrived at the hospital in a private vehicle.

On Monday evening, a 15-year-old teenager was wounded in a drive-by shooting in west Little Rock, Ford reported. Officers were called a little before 7 p.m. to the apartment complex at 1502 Green Mountain Drive for a report of a shooting, according to a dispatch log.

The teenage victim described walking down Green Mountain Drive and being shot by somebody in a vehicle, according to Ford. The victim, who did not have life-threatening injuries, then went to the apartment complex to seek help, he said.

Last year’s homicide figure became a marker for a violent year in Arkansas’ capital city. According to a data kept by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette , Little Rock saw 55 homicides last year. The figure is the highest yearly total in a decade and the third highest total since 1993, when the city saw a record 76 homicides, according to department data.

The Little Rock Police Department tallied last year’s killings at 53 homicides. Unlike the Democrat-Gazette , Little Rock police do not include homicides that have been ruled justified within its yearly total. The department also does not include homicides that have been ruled accidental.

Last year’s homicide figure might rise with the death of 19-year-old Justin Duft, who died last week after being run over on Dec. 26 in the parking lot of a west Little Rock shopping center. Ford said his death would be added to the 2017 total if a medical examiner rules his death a homicide.

Metro on 01/09/2018