A 24-year-old Little Rock man has accepted a 12-year prison sentence for shooting up a woman's car as she and her 11-year-old daughter tried to escape him, the first of two armed ambushes authorities said he carried out against her.
Raylin Rashad Bailey later told police his target was the woman's boyfriend, a Little Rock man now under federal indictment on a gun charge. Bailey was arrested after the second attack three weeks later on 33-year-old Victoria Ward.
Sentencing papers filed last week show that Bailey, a first-time felony offender, pleaded no contest to three counts of committing a terroristic act in exchange for the sentence imposed by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Leon Johnson.
Bailey faced up to 20 years on each count, a Class B felony. Under the conditions of his plea agreement, negotiated by deputy prosecutor Cameron Coker and public defender Harrison Tome, a fourth terroristic-act count, involving the boyfriend, was dropped.
Police first encountered Ward on Aug. 7, 2021, when responding to a call about a shooting at the Bradford Estates apartments, 6310 Colonel Glenn Road. Her black Toyota Highlander, with a bullet strike on the driver's door, had crashed into the front gate of the complex, and she had a deep cut to her left shin and other cuts police described as "shrapnel wounds."
Ward told investigators she and her daughter were leaving the complex when a man she knew as "Reezy" approached them with a large gun and opened fire, court records show.
Ward said she was trying to drive away when she crashed into a column, describing how the gunman continued to walk toward her broken-down car while firing the gun. The man then fled in a white BMW, she said.
Detectives got security video from the complex that showed a man get out of a white BMW with an AK-47 rifle and start shooting at Ward's vehicle. Police would later be able to confirm that the gunman was Bailey, court filings show.
Police got an arrest warrant for Bailey but did not arrest him.
Three weeks later, Bailey attacked again at the Spanish Willow Apartments, 7510 Geyer Springs, where Ward and her boyfriend lived. This time, he was part of a group of three attackers, according to police reports.
Ward said she and her boyfriend had just pulled into the parking lot of the apartments when they saw a green pickup with three people inside, two of them wearing ski masks. The third was Bailey, according to police reports. As the vehicles passed, the people in the truck started shooting at her 2008 silver Ford Taurus, Ward told investigators, describing how she got out and returned fire. Three other vehicles were struck during the shoot-out.
Witnesses directed police to the apartments at 4625 Hoffman Road where officers saw two men running away before locating Bailey in a silver 2020 Mitsubishi Outlander and arresting him at gunpoint. Officers found two loaded assault-style rifles in the sport utility vehicle with him. Police testing showed that one of the rifles had been used in both shootings.
Nearby, investigators found the green truck, a 2003 Chevrolet 1500, with its engine running, 1.7 ounces of marijuana in the cab and a pistol and shell casings in the bed, police reports show.
Questioned after his arrest, Bailey told police he had shot at Ward at the Bradford Estates apartments because he thought her boyfriend was with her. He also admitted to targeting the man, 25-year-old Allen Ivory, during the second ambush, court filings show.
Ivory declined to cooperate with officers, who arrested him after discovering he was wanted on a August 2021 federal firearm indictment. The indictment involved Ivory's January 2020 arrest after unspecified guns were found in his home at 2916 Monroe St. by probation officers, court records show.
Court records show Ivory has been on probation since January 2018, with felony convictions for domestic violence, failure to appear, and being a felon in possession of a firearm.