A 22-year-old man gunned down outside the Little Rock Dave & Buster's restaurant was ambushed by a killer who waited an hour for the victim to leave the eatery.
The motive appears to be revenge for a 10-month-old unsolved Little Rock homicide, a detective testified Thursday.
The July slaying of Kendrick Sisa of North Little Rock was caught on the restaurant's security cameras, with authorities charging Torrence Nation Tillman with capital murder because the killer was using Tillman's BMW sport utility vehicle, detective Irving Jackman said at a bond hearing for the 22-year-old defendant.
Tillman, of Little Rock, has been held without bail since his August arrest at a Georgia hotel a month after Sisa was killed. Pulaski County Circuit Judge Leon Johnson set bail at $1 million Thursday, four times the $250,000 Tillman's family and lawyer had requested.
Jackman, questioned by deputy prosecutor Jayme Butts-Hall, told the judge the surveillance video shows the silver BMW with red seats and dark rims driving past the southwest Little Rock restaurant, then parking on the south side of the eatery. The gunman got out of the vehicle and shot Sisa several times as he got into a car with two women and children, the detective testified.
Jackman said he immediately launched a search for the SUV, with the investigation beginning to focus on Tillman when police realized Tillman had been stopped while driving the vehicle, which had a New York paper license plate, a couple of days before Sisa was killed.
A friend of Tillman's told police Tillman admitted to shooting Sisa to get even for the February shooting death of Tillman's cousin, Khyree JaQuan Henry Allison, 20, at the South Shackleford Walmart. No one has been charged in the killing, which is also being investigated by Jackman.
Sisa's killer was wearing a light-blue sweatshirt with the initials PMN, while Allison had incorporated a company named PMN Worldwide LLC, said to be a record label and clothing line. Jackman told the judge that when he asked Tillman if the initials meant anything to him, Tillman said they did not.
However, a check of Tillman's social media turned up two pictures of Tillman wearing PMN shirts, with Allison in one of those photos, the detective testified. Further, a check of Tillman's cellphone records showed him to be in the vicinity of the restaurant when Sisa was killed.
Tillman has never been in trouble with the law before, and Dominique King, his attorney, argued there is no hard evidence linking him to Sisa's death. She said that no one who saw the shooting has identified Tillman as the gunman.
King also challenged the theory that Sisa was killed in retaliation for Allison's death because one witness to Sisa's slaying reported hearing the gunman say, "this is for my brother."
King further questioned whether police had investigated all possible suspects, noting that police had been told Sisa's slaying had been set up by a relative, although Jackman said that information led to a dead end.
Tillman's mother, Nyiesha Tenee Artis, 40, told the judge there was nothing sinister about Tillman going to Georgia. She said the family have relatives there and regularly visit.
Court records show Sisa has been in trouble with the law before, and he was on parole when he was killed. He'd been sentenced to six years in prison in September 2018 for theft by force, reduced from aggravated robbery, theft by receiving and three counts of breaking or entering for a series of car break-ins, an armed holdup involving an acquaintance and driving a stolen vehicle that had been involved in a police pursuit, crimes that occurred between September 2017 and June 2018.
When he was 15, in August 2014, Sisa was the youngest of four defendants charged in a Jacksonville home invasion robbery on Meadows Drive where five teenagers were forced into a closet. The arrests were subsequently sealed.
Sisa's half brother is Kelton Ahmad McIntire, who is serving an 18-year prison sentence for second-degree murder for killing cemetery groundskeeper Kristopher Bradley Dacus, 33, in North Little Rock's Edgewood Memorial Park in February 2020 when McIntire was 15.
Testifying at a hearing for his brother about six months before he was killed, Sisa said he had not set a good example for his younger brother, describing how he stole from McIntire to get money and smoked marijuana around him before going to prison at age 19. He was locked up when his brother was arrested and paroled in August 2020.