A 41-year-old Little Rock man who witnessed his cousin's murder and was the victim of a subsequent unsolved home-invasion robbery has accepted a 15-year prison sentence for repeated drug-dealing offenses.
Sentencing papers filed Thursday show that Zul Jalaal Mustafa pleaded guilty to simultaneous possession of firearms and drugs along with methamphetamine and oxycodone trafficking charges in exchange for the 15-year term imposed by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Leon Johnson. Mustafa faced up to 90 years on the charges.
Under conditions of the plea agreement negotiated by deputy prosecutor Tonia Acker and defense attorney Christian Alexander, five other felony charges related to the possession of amphetamine, methylphenidate, alprazolam, drug paraphernalia and guns were dropped.
Court records show Little Rock police with a search warrant raided Mustafa's home at 3118-A W. 14th, finding him asleep in bed. The drugs were found in a tool box in Mustafa's car and his bedroom. Two pistols and ammunition were seized from his bedroom.
Mustafa had been on probation since May 2017 when he pleaded guilty to hydrocodone possession, carisoprodol possession and possession of drug paraphernalia. Those charges resulted from his April 2016 arrest at his then-residence at 1407 N. Olive St. in North Little Rock.
In July 2017, Mustafa, girlfriend Jessica Trotter, 32, and her mother, Jeanell Trotter, 56, along with four children were attacked in a West 14th Street residence by two masked gunmen who broke down the door while shouting that they were North Little Rock police.
The robbers demanded money and forced him to open his safe so they could take $5,000 he had stored there, according to a police report.
Angry that Mustafa did not have more money, the robbers pointed a gun at Jessica Trotter and threatened to kill her. They also threatened to shoot her mother and the children.
Both Trotter and Mustafa were bound at the wrist with zip ties, according to the report. The children escaped the home through a window, and the robbers fled out the back door as soon as they heard the sirens of the arriving police.
In August 2008, Mustafa testified at the first-degree murder trial of Lloyd "Chestnut" Foster, telling a Pulaski County jury that he saw Foster, now 57, fatally shoot 26-year-old Deron Ricardo Jackson of Little Rock, Mustafa's cousin, in front of Jackson's W. 16th St. home in August 2007.
Mustafa and a neighbor of Jackson said Foster had chased Jackson around the house shooting at Jackson, who had refused Foster's demands to give up his money.
Clothes linked to Foster had Jackson's blood on them, and jurors deliberated 10 minutes to convict Foster, sentencing him to life. Foster, who was already serving a 105-year prison sentence for aggravated robbery and first-degree battery convictions from Columbia County, did not testify, but his lawyer argued that Foster was only a witness to the slaying, not the killer.