LITTLE ROCK — North Little Rock police arrested a man Tuesday in the death of Salvation Army Major Philip Wise, who was gunned down on Christmas Eve in front of his three young children.
The North Little Rock Police Department’s three month investigation into Wise’s shooting during an attempted robbery led officers Tuesday at 10:40 a.m. to the front door of the house at 314 N. Second St. in Helena-West Helena.
There, along with Arkansas State Police troopers and Helena-West Helena police officers, North Little Rock police investigators arrested Laquan Javaris Fitzpatrick, 19, on one count of capital murder.
“He has been a person of interest since shortly after the murder,” North Little Rock Police Chief Danny Bradley said at a Tuesday afternoon news conference held to announce the arrest.
Bradley said investigators interviewed Fitzpatrick early in the investigation but didn’t have enough evidence then to arrest him. Fitzpatrick had no criminal record before Wise’s death, but North Little Rock police arrested him on a gun-possession charge six days after the shooting, Bradley said. He added that Fitzpatrick and Wise had never met before Christmas Eve.
“I don’t have any information to think that Major Wise was targeted in advance,” Bradley said.
He said he could offer no information regarding a man who police believe was with Fitzpatrick when Wise died. He said he could not say which man investigators believe pulled the trigger.
“This is an ongoing case,” he said before the news conference began. “We continue to gather information and follow leads.”
No one, he said, has claimed a $10,000 reward offered in the case.
Wise’s widow, Cindy, is also a Salvation Army major. She heard about the arrest from the case’s lead investigator, North Little Rock police detective Don Maggard.
“Detective Maggard called while I was having lunch,” she said. “I had to ask him to repeat it. I couldn’t believe it.”
She said she told her children - two sons and a daughter - when she picked them up from school.
“They were walking on air,” she said.
She sat quietly in the back of the room during the news conference in the North Little Rock Police/Fire Training Facility on Willow Street. She didn’t announce her presence and sat with a friend away from the cameras and reporters.
After the news conference, she stood reading the official news release about Fitzpatrick’s arrest and shook her head.
“It almost doesn’t seem real, reading this on a piece of paper,” she said.
She said she couldn’t yet forgive the man who killed her husband, whether it’s Fitzpatrick or someone else.
“I’m working on that,” she said. “With God’s help, I’ll get there. I want to get there.”
Salvation Army slaying
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A little after 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve, Philip Wise returned to the Salvation Army Corps and Community Center in North Little Rock’s Baring Cross neighborhood after dropping off two bellringers on the last day of the charity’s red-kettle fundraising drive. Cindy Wise was alone inside. Her husband, a 40-year-old bewhiskered bear of a man, had to file a few papers and took along their three children.
In the parking lot behind the center at 1505 W. 18th St., two men dressed in black confronted Wise and demanded money. One pulled a gun and fired. Wise collapsed in a doorway and died within minutes. His children - ages 8, 6 and 4 - were close by.
The men in black drifted away toward the Windemere Hills housing projects.
The shooting happened just after the worst of a hard rain, meaning there were few witnesses on the street and little chance for physical evidence remaining at the scene.
The Baring Cross neighborhood west of Pike Avenue has more unsolved homicides since 2006 than any other North Little Rock neighborhood. One of them was the shooting death of a homeless man in January 2008 outside the same Salvation Army center where Wise died.
“This was a tough case from the beginning,” Bradley said of Wise’s shooting.
Patrol off icers asked around on the street. Detectives went door-to-door. Bradley declined to describe any of the evidence against Fitzpatrick, saying the investigation is continuing and he did not want to jeopardize it. The affidavit that Maggard filed seeking the arrest warrant was sealed.
“It’s just been a process, trying to put together all the pieces,” Bradley said.
North Little Rock police detective division Lt. Tracy Roulston said his investigators put in long hours.
“It’s good to see it pay off,” he said. “It’s a good day for us.”
While investigators found Fitzpatrick in Helena-West Helena in Phillips County, police said, he had lived recently at addresses in Little Rock and North Little Rock.
“To be honest, I don’t know that I could say for sure where he actually lives,”Bradley said.
According to the police report describing his Dec. 30 arrest on a charge of carrying a weapon, Fitzpatrick also uses thenames “Quan” and “LJ” and has two tattoos: one on his right arm that says “Marie” and another on his hand that says “Hoe Hop.”
On his Facebook page, Fitzpatrick refers to himself as “Hoe Hop Black” and quotes at length from the Gucci Mane song “My Own Worst Enemy.”
On Tuesday, Cindy Wise was thinking about a different song. Walking to her car to pick up her children, she mentioned that the students in a music class that her husband led had altered the lyrics of a hip-hop song to be about him. They first sang it for her Sunday.
“I don’t know that I could say out loud the words in the real song,” she said, almost laughing. “They’re some nasty words. But they took it and made it beautiful. I mean, it doesn’t sound beautiful the way they do it, but it’s a beautiful song, beautiful words. I’m just so grateful.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/17/2010