A Jacksonville parolee received a 20-year prison sentence Thursday for killing a man police say he believed had robbed him sometime earlier.
Alexander Luigi Zaio, 28, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, reduced from first-degree murder, and being a felon in possession of a firearm in exchange for the 20-year term negotiated by deputy prosecutor Jayme Butts-Hall and defense attorney Bill James.
Zaio was arrested about five hours after Gregory Michael Stricklen, 31, of Lonoke was found shot to death in June 2020. Stricklen was one of eight people killed in Jacksonville last year, a sharp rise after no homicides in 2019, two in 2018 and three in 2017, according to the Arkansas Crime Information Center.
According to police reports, Stricklen, a father of one, was killed in the home of Dani Lin Swinney at the Lakeside Estates mobile home park at 2613 E. Coffelt Road.
Police were called to the residence to investigate a shooting. They found a woman, Kristie Smith, rendering aid to Stricklen. Smith told investigators that she did not see who shot Stricklen because she was in the bathroom.
Swinney first told police that a masked man entered her camper and shot Stricklen. She later identified the man as Zaio, saying they had dated but she had broken up with him three or four days earlier and that he had refused to give her back her house key.
A search of the residence turned up, among other things, a 19-inch steel wrench in Swinney's bed. The discovery was significant because surveillance video showed Zaio standing outside the camper holding the wrench and listening through the wall, according to police reports.
Investigators arrested Zaio in North Little Rock. He refused to answer questions and asked for a lawyer.
During their investigation, police discovered that Stricklen had robbed Zaio two weeks earlier and Zaio had been looking for Stricklen ever since.
Investigators also searched Zaio's car, noting that the vehicle smelled of bleach and appeared to have been recently cleaned. A dollar store receipt in his pocket showed that Zaio had purchased cleaning supplies about three hours after Stricklen was killed.
Police also found a black bag with the clothing Zaio had been seen wearing on the surveillance video, some of it stained with apparent blood. The gun was never found.
Court records show Zaio was sentenced in October 2012 to five years of probation after pleading guilty to robbery, reduced from aggravated robbery, for his role in the October 2010 armed holdup of a woman, Eunjolie Williams, in North Little Rock,
Zaio's co-defendants, brother Dominic Zaio, 30, and a third man, Dominique Jajaun Rogers, also 30, both received 15-year robbery sentences.
Alexander Zaio's probation was revoked three times before he was sentenced in August 2017 to prison for five years a term that included his sentence for possessing methamphetamine in Jacksonville that same month. Records show Zaio was approved for parole in February 2018.