FORT SMITH -- A man who attacked and stabbed a female jogger on a trail at the Fort Smith National Historic Site last summer was sentenced in Sebastian County Circuit Court on Wednesday to 30 years in prison.
Elijah Reed, 27, pleaded guilty before Circuit Judge James Cox to attempted first-degree murder and to kidnapping. Deputy prosecutor Scott Houston said Reed will be eligible for parole in 21 years. Houston also said the victim in the case approved of Reed's plea bargain.
According to court records, Reed ran up to the woman as she jogged on the riverfront trail on Aug. 30, took her cellphone and threw it, and then stabbed her several times in the neck and head. The woman told police that her attacker went to the river and washed his shirt in the water and then ran away.
The woman was able to contact park patrons who called for help.
Later that day, a man who worked at a nearby business told police that Reed approached him and asked for a cigarette. Reed told the man he had just stabbed someone but for the man not to call police because he was heading to the police station to surrender.
He didn't. Officers found him several blocks from the historic site and told them that the blood on him was from an attack by a man.
A state forensic psychologist who performed a mental evaluation on Reed in February concluded that Reed had a mental disease but not a mental defect at the time of the attack. Dr. Paul Deyoub's report said Reed suffered from bipolar disorder, depression and poly-substance use disorder involving alcohol and marijuana, and that he had a history of methamphetamine use.
Deyoub concluded in his report that Reed had the capacity to appreciate the criminality of his conduct and to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law.
The report said that two days before the attack, Reed had been released from Valley Behavioral Health System where he had spent 11 days. Reed told Deyoub, according to the report, that he threw away the medication prescribed for him when he was released. He also said he had been drinking whiskey and smoking marijuana before he attacked the jogger.
Rita Watkins with the public defenders office told Cox that Reed has been taking his medication since his incarceration, although Reed told Cox that he stopped seeing the therapist.
Watkins said she believes that if Reed had gone to trial, a jury would have found him innocent by reason of insanity.
Metro on 03/29/2018