Little Rock man arrested after body found near home knifed neighbor in '17, files show

Robert Johnson
Robert Johnson

The 62-year-old Little Rock man accused of killing a man found dead behind a southwest Little Rock home last week once stabbed another man so deeply the victim's intestines were exposed.

Robert Johnson, charged with first-degree murder, is in jail with bail set by Little Rock District Judge Melanie Martin at $1 million.

Johnson was arrested at 1512 S. Buchanan St. two days after police found Shawn "Skinny" Price, 39, dead behind a home at South Elm and West 15th streets.

Police said James Coleman, 66, reported finding a body July 10 between the garage and Johnson's residence at 1501 S. Elm St.

Price, a father of two who is originally from Jonesboro, appeared to have been dead for some time, and the "blunt force" trauma on the body provoked police suspicions. An autopsy at the state Crime Laboratory confirmed that Price had died by violence. Authorities have not revealed further details of how he was killed.

[RELATED: Click here for interactive map + full coverage of crime in Little Rock]

Price had been living at the Little Rock Compassion Center homeless shelter at 3618 W. Roosevelt Road, according to the police report by homicide detective Terry McDaniel.

Court records show that Johnson was sentenced to three years of probation for first-degree battery in June 2017 for stabbing a neighbor in North Little Rock more than three years ago. Johnson was arrested at 2524 E. Washington St., on June 5, 2016, after police found Parnell May, 34, bleeding in the front yard of a duplex with a small part of his intestines exposed.

According to a police report, officers had been called to the duplex, where both men had apartments, to investigate a noise complaint at 8:37 a.m. Johnson was sitting on the porch when officers arrived.

May reportedly told police that he had been beating Johnson's apartment with a stick and that Johnson had emerged and stabbed him.

Johnson told officers that he had been protecting himself from May, who had attacked him with a knife in one hand and a belt wrapped around the other. Johnson said he'd taken the knife away from May and stabbed him. He also directed police to the weapon, a red-handled paring knife that was daubed with apparent blood.

In a subsequent interview with detectives, May reportedly denied telling police that he'd been hitting Johnson's apartment. He said Johnson had called the police on him twice the night before to complain about noise from May's apartment and that Johnson had attacked him with the knife unprovoked when the men both happened to walk out onto their shared front porch at the same time.

Witnesses to the encounter were Johnson's girlfriend, 55-year-old Janice Gail Tatum, and May's girlfriend, 41-year-old Ann Marie Mireles. Each woman lived with her boyfriend, and each offered a version of events favorable to her partner.

Six months later, Mireles was dead, and Pulaski County sheriff's deputies named May as her killer. Her half-naked body was found on the front steps of the Vaughn Road duplex in North Little Rock that she and May had moved into three days earlier.

Deputies who arrested May reported finding him hiding under the couple's bed with Mireles' blood spattered on his clothes and boots.

Authorities say Mireles had been beaten over an extended period. She had so many injuries -- broken ribs, bruises, cuts and scrapes from head to toe -- that doctors could not count them all.

Police seized a walking cane from the house, along with a metal pipe that had Mireles' blood on one end and DNA from May on the other, according to reports.

May's cellphone also held four photographs of the badly injured, but still alive, Mireles taken less than eight hours before her body was found, according to testimony.

She was punched so hard in the face that her teeth were driven through her lips. She suffered a blow so severe that her liver was ripped in two, an injury that's more commonly inflicted by car crashes than by homicides, the medical testimony said.

May represented himself at his first-degree murder trial in January 2018, telling jurors that Mireles had not been murdered or even beaten like authorities claimed.

May told jurors that Mireles was killed by the medical personnel who tried to revive her, saying their rough handling inflicted the lethal liver injury and that they poisoned her with the equivalent of rubbing alcohol.

May's behavior at his trial -- his repeated tirades and outbursts -- led Pulaski County Circuit Judge Leon Johnson to repeatedly eject him from the proceeding, which ended in a mistrial at May's request.

May and his court-appointed attorneys are now fighting an effort to try him again on the grounds that the judge wrongly ended the trial prematurely.

Metro on 07/17/2019

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