A 20-year-old Texas man, linked to a multistate shoplifting ring targeting Apple stores, has accepted a two-year prison sentence for his role in the theft of 25 iPhones, MacBooks and iPads from the Little Rock store.
Sentencing papers filed Thursday show Jalek Ingram received a total of three years in prison after pleading guilty to theft and commercial burglary for the March 2018 Apple store theft for a two-year term, with an additional year in prison for a second-degree battery charge stemming from his role in beating a fellow jail inmate unconscious last November.
Three other men are charged in the Apple thefts while three other jail inmates, including two murder suspects, are accused in the attack on Marcus Lorenzo Daniels of Crawfordsville about 1½ weeks before Thanksgiving.
Sheriff's deputies found Daniels, 39, bleeding, bruised and unconscious in an exercise area Nov. 18, and surveillance video shows him under attack by 11 inmates, according to an arrest affidavit. Daniels was beaten unconscious and his pants pulled off. Jailers were alerted after another group of inmates tried to revive Daniels with cold water but could not rouse him.
From the recording, investigators identified 10 assailants besides Ingram, with three of them charged with second-degree battery alongside Ingram -- capital-murder suspects Gary Glenn Bradley, 20 and Darrius Holmes, 27, along with Keith Lamar Kinchen, 23, all of Little Rock, who is jailed on a federal gun and marijuana indictment.
A motive for the attack is not stated. Records show that at the time, Daniels was a parolee jailed on a domestic-violence charge in the choking and beating his girlfriend Elizabeth Gray of North Little Rock, for which he received a six-year prison sentence in January.
Ingram has been jailed since being extradited from Texas last July to face charges for the Apple store theefts. He was arrested after Apple security officials supplied Little Rock detectives with security video of Ingram and three other men -- Timothy Oneal, 22, of Little Rock, Xaiyviyon McCuin, 23, of Garland, Texas, and Anthony Smith, who has addresses in Louisiana and Texas -- stealing the merchandise in March 2018 from the store on Chenal Parkway.
An arrest report states there were five men who stole 18 iPhones, six Macbooks and an iPad, valued at $26,445. The five grabbed the items and ran out. The other three defendants are awaiting trial on theft and commercial burglary charges.
Apple officials said the men were part of a group suspected of thefts in six Texas cities -- Dallas, Plano, Austin, Houston, Frisco and San Antonio -- as well as ones in Oklahoma City and Ridgeland, Miss., court filings show.
Ingram will serve a four-year suspended sentence once he's released from prison on the condition that he reimburse Apple for the costs of the stolen merchandise.