The Little Rock teenager who authorities say was the driver in a November 2016 drive-by shooting that killed a 2-year-old girl accepted a 20-year prison sentence for his role in the toddler's slaying.
The slaying of Ramiya Reed two days before Thanksgiving in 2016 stunned the capital city and drew national attention to Little Rock.
Police said the toddler was sitting in her mother's lap in a car being driven along South Harrison Street when a passing car opened fire into the family vehicle. There were two adults and five children in the car. Ramiya, the only one struck, was shot in the stomach.
On Wednesday, 18-year-old Larry James Jackson Jr. pleaded guilty to unlawful discharge of a firearm from a vehicle before Pulaski County Circuit Judge Barry Sims.
Chief deputy prosecutor John Johnson said investigators believe Jackson, who was 16 at the time, was the driver of the second car. The Class B felony carries a 20-year maximum sentence.
Under the plea agreement, negotiated by Jackson's attorney, Willard Proctor, prosecutors dropped capital-murder and five other unlawful-discharge counts, charges that could have sent Jackson to prison for life.
The man police identified as the shooter, 23-year-old Deshaun Malik Rushing of Little Rock, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, reduced from capital murder, in April in exchange for a 30-year prison sentence.
The prosecutor said Jackson and Rushing targeted Ramiya's car because they thought another one of her cousins, a member of a rival gang, was in it.
The car was driven by 39-year-old Shunta Renae Johnson of Little Rock, and the men were looking for her son, Zhraequon Johnson, whom police say is a member of the Murder Mafia gang. The 20-year-old Little Rock man is currently jailed on drug and gun charges.
Detectives said Jackson and Rushing were members of the Real Hustlers Incorporated, a Bloods gang affiliate formerly known as the Monroe Street Hustlers, and that Rushing believed the cousin had shot up the home of Rushing's mother.
For a time in Ramiya's shooting the investigation appeared to stall, despite a reward that grew from $10,000 to $50,000 over six months. No one in the area of 20th and Harris streets saw what happened, police said.
Three weeks later, 3-year-old Acen Amir King was shot and killed in a road-rage incident, and police arrested a suspect within five days, a 35-year-old Little Rock man with convictions for armed robbery and sexual assault. In July he was convicted of first-degree murder and committing a terroristic act and was sentenced to 50 years in prison.
But police said it wasn't until May of 2017 that Ramiya's mother, Rokiya Williams, 29, went to them and said she knew the street names of the men in the other car.
Williams told investigators that she had been told who was behind the shooting a couple of months after her daughter was killed but had been too worried about the safety of her family to step forward sooner. Rushing and Jackson were arrested a couple of days later.
Despite his young age, Jackson has a significant criminal history. Jackson was arrested in the murder case during a pretrial hearing on a probation-revocation petition for property crimes convictions.
Court records show that Jackson has been under court supervision since he was at least 14 years old when he was charged as an adult for the first time in October 2014 with aggravated robbery and theft.
He was on probation at the time for undisclosed juvenile offenses when he was accused of carjacking a woman near his Cantrell Road home. He was arrested the next day by police who had to chase him down and found him carrying a gun.
Two days before he turned 15, Jackson pleaded guilty to felony theft and misdemeanor gun possession in an arrangement with prosecutors that had him serve a term in a juvenile lockup, then spend five years on probation.
He was released from custody after officials with the state's Youth Services Division pronounced that Jackson had completed a rehabilitation program after eight months.
Almost six months later, he was arrested again when he and another teenager were caught with a stolen $50,000 Ford Mustang. He pleaded guilty to the subsequent theft-by-receiving charge in September of 2016 and had his probation extended by a year.
His next arrest was a week after Ramiya was killed when Sherwood police charged him with a January 2016 car theft.
Less than a month before he was identified as a suspect in the toddler's killing, Jackson was arrested in April 2016 in North Little Rock after police reported that he led officers on a pursuit in which cocaine, marijuana and pistols were thrown from the car he was driving.
Prosecutors said Wednesday that those outstanding cases would be resolved in the coming days without adding any time to Jackson's 20-year sentence.
Metro on 09/27/2018