A Pulaski County circuit judge on Thursday slashed the bail of a Little Rock man accused of having his ex-girlfriend shot in the face, and who has been recorded laughing about the severity of her injuries, after the defendant's lawyer suggested the woman staged the incident in an attempt to frame his client.
Authorities are "grasping at straws," attorney David Cannon said, ridiculing the investigation for failing to question potential witnesses, among them a man who testified Thursday that Steven Wayne Dellinger was nowhere around when the woman was shot.
Prosecutors asked Judge Herb Wright to raise Dellinger's $100,000 bail to $500,000, but the judge reduced it to $20,000 at Thursday's hearing.
Dellinger, who turns 49 next week, was still behind bars Thursday night. If he is able to make bail, he'll have to report weekly to probation for drug testing, the judge said.
Dellinger is charged with first-degree domestic battering, committing a terroristic act and possession of a firearm by certain persons. With convictions for drug and weapons possession, he faces up to 120 years in prison.
He's been in the Pulaski County jail since his Oct. 19 arrest at the Whispering Hills mobile home park, 11500 Chicot Road. Little Rock police Violent Crimes Apprehension Team arrested him just more than three weeks after the Sept. 25 shooting in front of Dellinger's home at 14000 Cooper Orbit Cove.
Just before 7 p.m. that day, 32-year-old Stephanie Suzanne Wallace of Benton showed up at the Baptist Health Medical Center emergency room after being shot in the face.
She was able to tell sheriff's deputies just before being rushed into surgery that she'd just been shot by 27-year-old Donald Allen Camp of Conway at Dellinger's direction, investigator Michael Bryant testified. Bryant showed the judge photographs of the 1-by-2 ½ inch wound on the left side of the woman's head near her jaw.
Bryant told the judge that deputies went to Dellinger's home that night, but decided against attempting to arrest him because of his reputation among law enforcement officers.
Instead, deputies returned with warrants the next day, arresting Camp at the home on charges of committing a terroristic act, first-degree battery and possession of a firearm by certain persons. Camp had blood on his shorts, which have been sent off for analysis.
Camp, who has convictions for drug trafficking, theft by receiving, leaving the scene of an injury-accident, residential burglary and fleeing, has been jailed ever since.
Wallace said she had been visiting Thomas Bloodworth, who lives across the street from Dellinger, Bryant told the judge. She said she was driving a friend's red Dodge pickup and was backing up when she saw Dellinger and Camp walking over.
Wallace said she stopped and rolled down her window to speak to the men. Camp shot her after Dellinger handed Camp a gun and told the younger man to shoot her, she told police.
Wallace wasn't sure why Dellinger would have any animosity toward her except that she had broken up with him and had no further interest in a romantic relationship, Bryant told the judge.
Bloodworth, testifying for the defense, said he's been a friend of Dellinger for a couple of years, but barely knows Wallace. He told the judge that Dellinger wasn't home the day of the shooting.
Bloodworth, who said he does yard work for Dellinger and keeps watch over his property when he's away, told the judge he had been cutting grass at the defendant's home when he saw a red pickup across the street in his own driveway.
He saw Camp approach the pickup, he said, but it was too dark to see exactly what happened. Bloodworth said he thinks the pickup door opened because the cab light went on and then "there was a flash and a bang."
When he next saw Camp, Bloodworth said, "he mentioned Stephanie had been shot in the neck. She made him get out of the truck because she didn't want to get him in trouble."
Cannon, the defense attorney, suggested that Wallace's injuries could have been an effort to frame Dellinger for the 19 grams of methamphetamine -- almost three-quarters of an ounce -- that deputies found in the pickup at the hospital. Wallace initially told investigators that she had borrowed the truck from Dellinger and that he was on his way to the hospital to get it.
"That's a great way to draw suspicion off yourself and throw it on your ex-boyfriend who you're not happy with," Cannon said, suggesting that Wallace is a drug dealer.
She has not been charged over the discovery, but court records show she is currently on probation for methamphetamine trafficking.
The lawyer also downplayed the significance of a jailhouse phone recording of Dellinger laughing about Wallace's injuries and jokingly threatening to shoot in the face the woman he was on the phone with.
Cannon objected to arguments by prosecutor Samuel Jackson that the nine-minute recording showed any sinister intent on Dellinger's part. The call was made by a falsely accused man trying to make the best of a bad situation, Cannon said.
The recording was the centerpiece of the prosecution argument to increase Dellinger's bail. A chuckling Dellinger is heard saying that his ex-girlfriend is breathing through a tracheotomy and having to be fed by feeding tube "and I think it's cool."
Dellinger also talks about his "strap," which is slang for gun, and says, "I'll blow your face off, too" later in the call.
Metro on 01/04/2019
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this headline misidentified the person recorded laughing about the victim's injuries.