Vet slain after gunmen break into home in Little Rock

Little Rock police gather evidence Friday at a home in the 7300 block of Fairways Drive after responding to a 911 call there around 12:30 a.m. The caller reported an armed, masked intruder in the residence. Officers found a 34-year-old man fatally shot inside the home.
Little Rock police gather evidence Friday at a home in the 7300 block of Fairways Drive after responding to a 911 call there around 12:30 a.m. The caller reported an armed, masked intruder in the residence. Officers found a 34-year-old man fatally shot inside the home.

A disabled veteran was shot and killed in his home Friday morning in what witnesses say was an armed robbery, according to police reports.

Raymond Grayson, 35, of Little Rock had died from a gunshot wound when police arrived Friday morning at 7317 Fairways Drive, department spokesman officer Eric Barnes said.

A 911 caller told police at 12:37 a.m. Friday that three men wearing all black broke into the house with handguns and demanded money, Barnes said. Two women and a 4-year-old child who neighbors said is Grayson's son were in the home at the time of the shooting, a police report said.

Whether the robbers got away with any cash or items was not immediately clear. The single-story brick home, built in 1967, had been broken into, detectives said in a police report.

Neighbors said they were afraid Friday afternoon, hours after the police cars and lights were gone. The house is nestled between two other homes, with fewer than 30 feet separating them.

The average neighbor is a retiree or older person who has lived in the area for decades, said Kenneth "KJ" Hubbard, whose mother lives along Fairways Drive. In the 10 years since his mother moved to the neighborhood, Hubbard said he'd seen police cars three times -- twice on patrol and once when a robber ran from another street and onto Fairways Drive.

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"It's quiet," he said. "We never see police around here."

According to reports, police have not had a need to go to Fairways Drive in at least two years.

"It's alarming," said Debi Spector, another resident. "I'm just in shock. ... We all talk to each other here. We know each other. Kids still play in the street here."

Spector's parents moved into a home on Fairways in the 1960s, she said. While crime has ebbed and flowed to surrounding areas, she said it's never hit so close to home.

Grayson moved to Fairways Drive in midsummer, said several neighbors, who described activity at the house as strange.

Cars always seemed to be coming in and out of the drive, they said. A car with its engine on and a person inside sat in the driveway "at all hours of the day and night," one neighbor said. The blinds stayed shut, and the people who lived there rarely waved back at neighbors.

"I couldn't tell which car was supposed to be there because there were always so many around," Hubbard said. "It always seemed like men were there. Never women."

Hubbard said he walked by the house often on his way to the basketball court up the street but never met Grayson.

Hubbard said he keeps a close watch on the neighborhood, and since he moved back to Little Rock several months ago he's considered the house where Grayson died to be odd.

"When [Hubbard's brother] told me this morning, I knew exactly where it'd happened," he said. "I didn't even have to ask."

Grayson was arrested less than a mile away from his home last month, court records show. He didn't stop at a red light and, as a felon, he wasn't allowed to have a gun that was stashed in his car.

An arrest report said Grayson ran a red light, which caused another car to strike his vehicle. He got out of the car and tried to get a gun out of his trunk, the report said. The .40-caliber firearm was loaded, the report said.

Grayson has had more than 15 run-ins with Little Rock police and Pulaski County sheriff's deputies since 2006, according to court records, which list him as Raymond "Young Drop" Grayson.

He was arrested for drug possession at least three times; arrested for carrying a weapon as a felon five times; domestic battery twice; aggravated assault three times; along with a handful of traffic violations, court records show.

According to a mental evaluation from a 2018 aggravated-assault arrest, Grayson was in the Army for eight years and took part in combat during two tours in Iraq. He suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, the evaluation said.

The examiner said Grayson seemed uninterested in the questions the doctor asked him, and when asked what he did, he said he sat at home most days, except when he had his son.

When asked what he would have done differently to prevent him from assaulting his girlfriend in 2018, Grayson's answer was short.

"Not let people in my life."

Metro on 02/09/2019

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