A Jacksonville man has received a 10-year prison sentence for separate shootings less than a year apart, one of which wounded a man in the foot.
Sentencing papers filed Monday show that Alijah O'Neal Mills, 24, pleaded guilty to first-degree battery, two counts of felon in possession of a firearm and three counts of committing a terroristic act in exchange for the 10-year term imposed by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Cathi Compton. Each count is a Class B felony that carries a 20-year maximum sentence.
Mills will serve a five-year suspended sentence after his release from prison under the conditions of the plea agreement negotiated by deputy prosecutor Wilson Raines and public defender Zaisha Heardmon.
Court records show Timothy Dennis Ryan, 48, of Cabot was shot in the left foot in front of his home at 10120 Peters Road on Sept. 29, 2019. Ryan told Pulaski County sheriff's deputies that a van pulled into the front yard and the woman driver asked if she could leave the vehicle there.
When Ryan refused permission, a man in the van approached him and started arguing, then pulled a pistol and fired at least three shots, he told deputies. The man and woman, along with others in the van, left in a car that had followed them to the residence.
About two months later, Ryan's niece Deanna Copeland told investigators that she had been in the van with the others and Mills had been the man who shot Ryan "trying to scare him," according to an arrest report.
She said they had gone to Ryan's home because the van had broken down nearby and a passing motorist in a Cadillac helped them push it to her uncle's home. She said an angry Ryan had walked out from behind the house, cursing at Mills and using a racial slur. She said Mills fired the gun after Ryan refused to stop cursing at him. Copeland said Ryan went into the house and she, Mills and the others left in the Cadillac.
Investigators got an arrest warrant for Mills in November 2019 and arrested him the next month.
Authorities said that about nine months later, while free on bail, Mills opened fire in front of Buck's Country Store at 1605 S. JP Wright Loop Road in Jacksonville before dawn on Aug. 30, 2020. Gunfire struck the apartment homes of two women at the neighboring Courtyard Cottages.
Two bullets entered the residence of Carolyn Colclough while she was asleep, and Claudine Fields said she woke up and found a bullet hole in her bedroom wall.
A witness, Christian Mason, told police that she'd just pulled into the store and saw Mills talking to a woman and two men when a gold Chevrolet Impala pulled up to the gas pump.
The passenger in the car, Nathan Andrew Hales of Beebe, had walked up to her when Mills approached Hales and started an argument, Mason told investigators, court files show.
Hales, 33, told Mills to leave him alone, got back into the Impala and left, Mason said. Mills got into a sport utility vehicle, and Mason said the next thing she knew, someone in the vehicle started shooting. She said a bullet struck her car as she laid on the ground to avoid the bullets.
The store security video shows Mills getting out of the SUV and firing four rounds from a shotgun at the Impala. Four slug shell casings and an unfired buckshot round were found by a gas pump, while six 10mm shell casings were discovered where the Impala had been.
Police got an arrest warrant for Mills the following month, with officers arresting him Oct. 1, 2020. According to arrest reports, Jacksonville police encountered Mills, with a pistol in his waistband, on Union Street and ultimately subdued him with five bean-bag rounds when officers could not talk him into surrendering. Mills has been in the Pulaski County jail ever since.
Mills enters prison with 13 felony convictions. He has been on probation since pleading guilty in July 2015 to marijuana trafficking stemming from an arrest when he was 17. His probation was extended in 2017 after his guilty plea to possession of drug paraphernalia in Lonoke County following an arrest in which sheriff's deputies found him with a drug smoking pipe and a sword during a traffic stop.
Mills received six years of probation last August after pleading guilty to methamphetamine and firearm counts in Lonoke County following an August 2020 arrest, with another man, 22-year-old Tyler Lemons of Sherwood.