A 60-year-old Little Rock man with a history of criminal bullying has been sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Sentencing papers filed Thursday by deputy prosecutor Sam Jackson show that Carl Dean Wynn Jr. received the sentence, three years short of the maximum penalty, from Pulaski County Circuit Judge Herb Wright, who found Wynn guilty as charged with terroristic threatening, a Class D felony.
The charge stems from a May 25, 2017, confrontation between Wynn and a neighbor, 40-year-old Joshua LaFever, in front of LaFever's home on Asbury Road, court filings show. Wynn lived at 518 Asbury, court records show.
LaFever told detectives that he was having his roof replaced and that Wynn became angry because most workers in the crew LaFever had hired were Hispanic men. The younger man said he was in his pickup and was about to drive away when Wynn walked up, yanked the door open and started jabbing him in the chest with his finger, calling LaFever and the workers racial slurs, court files show.
Wynn demanded that LaFever get out of his truck and fight him. When LaFever refused and told Wynn to leave him alone, Wynn said he was going to kill him, his wife and two children, and he again used racial slurs, files show.
Wynn left and LaFever went into his house, locked the doors and called 911. While LaFever was waiting for police, Wynn returned and told him that he was going to need 24-hour security, then left again before police arrived, court files show.
A witness, 22-year-old Danielle Paul, confirmed LaFever's account to police, telling investigators that she saw Wynn open the door to LaFever's pickup, poke him in the chest and call the younger man names while making threats.
The incident mirrors a run-in with the law that Wynn had in the fall of 2006, which resulted in a felony conviction for impersonating a federal agent and state charges of misdemeanor criminal mischief for which he received probation and fines.
The charges came out of accusations that Wynn had mounted a harassment campaign against Graham Smith Construction on Kanis Road in Little Rock.
Federal court records show that the company's owner gave police a surveillance video that showed an unidentified person throwing spikes from a dark automobile onto the driveway of the business. The owner also reported seeing a green Jeep, bearing an emblem similar to that of the United States Border Patrol, parked at a nearby residence along with a black automobile that resembled the vehicle in the surveillance video. The emblem on the Jeep included a portion of the great seal of the United States and the words "United States of America Citizens Task Force," an emblem that also appeared on the faxes received by the construction company.
Investigators determined that Wynn resided there, and surveillance video from later dates showed a person matching Wynn's description at the location of the business when additional spikes were placed on the driveway.
Federal agents arrested Wynn in December 2006, and in Wynn's green Jeep they discovered spike sticks like those that damaged tires at the construction company. Investigators also seized official-looking badges and shirts along with a bullet-resistant vest from his home. Some of the seized items included green caps with yellow letters reading "U.S. Border Patrol" and similarly colored signs declaring "US Border Patrol Observation Agent."
Little Rock police reported that Wynn had faxed letters to the company, with an emblem similar to the one on his Jeep, claiming the company was under investigation because of its hiring practices. Wynn, then as now an out-of-work carpenter, had complained the company hired illegal migrants who kept him from working for years.
Wynn was sentenced to a year of federal probation in August 2007 in an agreement with federal prosecutors that called for him to plead guilty to the impersonation charge in exchange for the dismissal of a charge of possession of body armor by a violent felon.
Three months after Wynn was sentenced, federal prosecutors moved to revoke his probation, reporting that a U.S. emblem attached to his vehicle hadn't been removed, despite that being a condition of his probation. Prosecutors also complained that he hadn't complied with other conditions of his probation, including submitting a DNA sample and undergoing counseling.
The allegations led to Wynn being sentenced in December 2007 to a year in federal prison followed by a year of supervised release. He was released from federal prison in September 2008. Since then, he's twice been convicted of misdemeanor terroristic threatening.
He received a one-year suspended sentence and was fined $2,340 after being convicted at a trial in October 2018 for sending a threatening text message to his stepsister Lisa Johnson, 49, of North Little Rock in May 2017. According to an arrest affidavit, Wynn described how he tried to persuade his father to kill Johnson's mother, describing what would have been a "grotesque" murder. Wynn followed that description with the statement, "My point is I am willing to kill."
Files show Wynn also texted that he would send "gangsters" he met in prison to "do his dirty work," stating that "I am going to hurt you, and you will live in pain the rest of your life. I am coming after you from all directions."
In July 2015 in Garland County, he pleaded guilty to a terroristic threatening charge, reduced from a felony, in exchange for a year of unsupervised probation. That case was based on threatening emails that Wynn sent to Weyerhaeuser Co. at 810 Whittington Ave. in Hot Springs after the timberland company refused to sell Wynn a Saline County property under the conditions he wanted.
"Sell me the property. Don't be stupid and make me come to your office. Don't force me to fight you," he said in an email to Weyerhaeuser employee Lon Moore, court files show.
Warned by lawyers for the Washington-based company against sending such messages and told that Weyerhaeuser would never do business with him, Wynn responded to Jim Johnston, an assistant general counsel, that "I don't want the land any more. I wanted [Weyerhaeuser]."
"Disgruntled people do crazy things. Disgruntled postal workers do to [sic]. After all this trouble and the terrible future I see, I could never live there. I will see you soon. I will see all of you soon," Wynn said.
Federal filings show his criminal history includes three convictions for terroristic threats prior to 2006, which were based on an incident in which Wynn mailed portions of a bomb and a sketch of the bomb to an Arkansas man with a note that said, "I will spare no expense to get you dead bastard"; a telephone call in which Wynn threatened a woman by saying that he was going to shoot her and hide her body; and an assault against several detention officers with a phone handset and a wall phone's cord.
Wynn's record also included a conviction for marijuana trafficking, which resulted from a search at Wynn's residence that turned up marijuana, scales, three handguns, three assault rifles, two .22-caliber rifles, two shotguns, brass knuckles, a bullet-resistant vest, a scanner, walkie-talkies and night vision goggles.
Metro on 01/21/2020