LITTLE ROCK -- Mujera Lungaho, the 30-year-old North Little Rock protester accused of vandalizing a Confederate cemetery monument and firebombing a North Little Rock police car, has been charged with defacing the Little Rock Police Fallen Officers Memorial and the Pulaski County Prosecuting Attorney's Office with spray paint.
Text messages found on Lungaho's cellphone and information provided by the Conway woman who authorities say exchanged text messages with him link Lungaho to the Sept. 3 anti-police graffiti that was spray-painted on police department and prosecutors' offices in downtown Little Rock, according to an arrest affidavit released Tuesday by Little Rock District Judge Melanie Martin. The offices are about a quarter-mile apart.
Lungaho is also under federal indictment over the fire-bombing accusations. The North Little Rock police car was set on fire that same September day at the Rose City substation on East Broadway Street.
Lungaho is free on bail and on monitored home confinement.
Lungaho was formally charged Monday in Pulaski County Circuit Court with four state felonies in connection with the graffiti spray painted on the marker at the Oakland & Fraternal Historic Cemetery Park on Barber Street in Little Rock, the memorial at the police department on West Markham and the prosecuting attorney's office on Spring Street. The cemetery had been damaged about two months earlier.
Prosecuting Attorney Larry Jegley has recused from the case since his offices were damaged. Hugh Finkelstein with the Office of the Prosecutor Coordinator has been called in to serve as a special prosecutor.
The state charges -- destruction of a grave marker, defacing objects of public respect and two counts felony criminal mischief -- together carry a maximum sentence of 46 years in prison.
The federal indictment charges Lungaho with conspiracy to maliciously damage property by use of an explosive, use of an incendiary device during a crime of violence and two counts of malicious use of an explosive device to damage property.
Court records show that Lungaho came to the attention of police about 10 days after the cemetery damage was discovered July 10 by sexton John Rains, 57. The caretaker reported the Confederate Soldier Memorial and nine wooden Confederate grave markers had been vandalized overnight.
Some type of cutting tool had been used to scratch out the word Confederate on the wooden markers, and one of them had been turned over. A stone marker for Confederate Gen. Albert Rust, an Arkansas Congressman, was missing from his grave with the words "The South Lost" painted on the stone's base.
Rains told police the memorial, a fixture at the 150-year-old cemetery since 1914, was "irreplaceable." The monument commemorates a mass grave of 900 Confederate soldiers. About 3,337 Confederate soldiers are buried on 12 acres on the property, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Police saw that "large chunks of granite" had been broken off the edges of the obelisk. Painted on the marker were "murder," "Black Lives Matter," "No Justice" "By Any Means Necessary," "Power To The People," "Defund Pigs" and "Abolish Police." Repairing the damage could cost more than $331,650, according to authorities.
Three mounted game cameras that had been placed in the cemetery weeks earlier had been removed, but investigators found two of them while searching the grounds.
Photos collected from the cameras show four people at the scene, among them a man and a woman, communicating with walkie-talkies. They arrived at the cemetery about 1:40 a.m. July 9.
The pair are seen climbing the obelisk in an attempt to attach straps to a vehicle to try and pull the monument down. Officers reported finding tire tracks with two divots from where the vehicle's wheels had been spinning in front of the marker. Found at the scene were a glove, a chain and a mask. Plastic packaging from a padlock showing fingerprints also was discovered.
Assisted by Magean Warnock, an investigator with the Department of Human Service's Division of Children & Family Services, the agency's "facial recognition tools" identified three people -- a man and two women -- in the photos, according to arrest reports. None of them have been charged, but Warnock was instrumental in identifying Lungaho as the fourth person in the photographs, according to an arrest affidavit.
The fourth person seen in the photographs had a visible scar on his forehead and a "large amount of hair," according to an arrest affidavit.
Lungaho did not come to the attention of police until investigators reviewed video of a July 18 face-off between police supporters and Black Lives Matter activists at the Arkansas State Capitol that showed a man with a mark or scar on his forehead.
Police noted that one of the Black Lives Matter supporters was wearing the same kind of shoes as one of the suspects photographed at the cemetery, had a bracelet on his left wrist like the suspect did, and had a lot of hair. Using Warnock's information, a search of police records led investigators to Lungaho's driver's license photo that clearly shows his forehead scar.
Lungaho was arrested in the cemetery vandalism case about 12 hours after security cameras recorded three people dressed in dark clothing spray-painting "Charge Killer Cops" and "Defund The Police" and other slogans in red and orange on the Little Rock Municipal Court building next to the police station.
Two police vehicles in the station's east parking lot were marked in orange with "Defund Police" and "Arrest Killer Cops.""Defund The Police" was painted on the Fallen Officers Memorial.
At the prosecuting attorney's office, "Fire Jegley," "Breonna," "Arrest Starks" and "Justice Bradley Blackshire S.R." were painted in red or orange paint.
According to arrest affidavits, officers found Lungaho in his front yard on Mills Street talking on his phone but had to chase him over a couple of blocks when he ran from them. He had red or orange paint on his shirt and shoes, which police seized along with his cell phone.
Police got a search warrant for his phone, and the device contained a photograph showing him standing next to the burning North Little Rock patrol car. State Police were able to retrieve messages Lungaho exchanged through Instagram, the photo-sharing site, and Signal, the encrypted messaging service.
One of the Signal messages found by police was between Lungaho and Emily Terry, 24, of Conway, the arrest affidavit shows. In response to Terry's query, "What did you guys do?" Lungaho responds, "Tagged the s* out of police-involved buildings ... All except one downtown ... and that one by my house."
Terry has not been charged.
In an Oct. 5 meeting with police and federal authorities, Terry, accompanied by her attorney Jordan Tinsley, "verified that she did receive the messages from Mr. Lungaho regarding the damages that were done to the police involved buildings in Little Rock, according to the affidavit.