A 23-year-old parolee who claims he fatally shot a 19-year-old North Little Rock friend who was mad at him for not shooting the friend's mother has accepted a 29-year, no-parole sentence for first-degree murder, sentencing papers filed Wednesday show.
Afan Etoria Humphrey pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in exchange for the prison term imposed by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Karen Whately that will keep him locked up until he is 49. His plea agreement was negotiated by deputy prosecutor Tonia Acker and attorney Leslie Borgognoni with the public defender's office.
Arrested about two weeks after Wesley McKinley Everett was found dead in the street in the 2900 block of Pike Avenue in December 2018, Humphrey has been jailed ever since. Records show he had been approved for parole in November 2018, almost two months before the slaying.
Everett was discovered shot in the head and lying next to a .22 caliber shell casing about two hours after North Little Rock police had received a complaint from his mother's boyfriend, 45-year-old Ronnie Undrey Johnson, that Everett and a stranger had been at his home at 1610 ½ Pike Ave., and that the stranger had fired a shot at Johnson and Everett's mother, 57-year-old Belinda Everett, court filings show. Police hadn't been able to find the men but collected a .22 shell from the alley behind the couple's home.
Investigators discovered that about an hour before that incident, Everett and another man had been at the home of his neighbor Billy Joe Wiley, 66, at the apartment complex at 1844 44th St. Wiley told police Everett and a stranger had visited, with the stranger stealing Wiley's "rusty colored" .22 caliber long-barrel pistol and leaving.
Wiley said Everett had left following the stranger after telling Wiley he would get the gun back for him. Wiley said the only clue he had to the stranger's identity was that the man had indicated he lived at the nearby apartments at 4412 Lynn Lane.
About the same time that Everett and the stranger had been at Wiley's, Everett had been on the phone with his sister, telling her he was hanging out with "Chuckey," and detectives found surveillance video of the two men walking in the 2900 block of Pike about 30 minutes after that conversation. Video discovered by police further showed Everett had been in the street about two hours before his body was found.
Detectives knew that Humphrey, who has claimed to be a Bloods gang member since age 13, had gone by the name Chuckey before, had recently been paroled and had a mother living at the Lynn Lane apartments. Further, they found Facebook accounts using names similar to Chuckey that had numerous photographs of Humphrey, court filings show.
Using contact information from Everett's cell phone led police to an Instagram account that had photos of Humphrey, including one picture taken on New Year's Eve 2019 of a masked man holding a rusty colored, long-barrel pistol. The day before Humphrey was arrested, police found Instagram videos of the masked man holding the gun. In social media messages, Humphrey confirmed that he was the masked man, according to court filings.
Police arrested Humphrey in a raid at the Lynn Lane apartments, where officers collected a .22 cartridge from his bedroom windowsill while the rusty colored .22 pistol was discovered under a love seat in the living room.
Crime Laboratory testing showed the shell casings found by Everett's body and by his mother's home had been fired from the gun.
Questioned after his arrest, Humphrey said he had been with Everett that night and had gone with him to Everett's mother's home so Everett could confront his mother about something.
Humphrey said Everett had urged him to shoot the woman and her boyfriend, but Humphrey said he refused, only firing a shot toward the couple's home to scare them because he didn't want to kill them, court filings show.
He and Everett left but as they were walking away, Everett started berating him, calling him a "b***h" for not shooting the couple. Humphrey said he got mad, pulled out the gun and shot Everett while standing about a foot behind him. Humphrey said he then ran home and hid the gun.
Federal prosecutors indicted Humphrey on a charge of felon in possession of a firearm for having the .22 pistol about five months after his arrest. He pleaded guilty in July 2020 and, deemed an armed career criminal by federal law, was sentenced to 19 1/2 years in May 2021, the maximum under sentencing guidelines. His federal time will run concurrently with his murder sentence.
Court records show Humphrey has been in trouble with the law since he was 11, when he was convicted in juvenile court of residential burglary.
At age 16, he and another teenager were charged as adults with aggravated robbery, accused of robbing a man in the Fun Wash laundry bathroom at 3804 Camp Robinson Road in June 2015. The pair were arrested a short distance away. His case was transferred to juvenile court, while his co-defendant was acquitted at trial.
When Humphrey was 18 in 2017, police linked him to five North Little Rock burglaries -- some of them conducted as part of a three-person ring -- over about a two-week span in August 2017 and September 2017, which resulted in Humphrey's pleading guilty to four counts each of residential burglary and theft in February 2018 in exchange for a six-year prison sentence.