Pastors, police plead for tip on NLR killing

Salvation Army slaying reward at $10,000

Wiping their eyes after a prayer are (from left) Salvation Army Major Jim Bovender, the father-in-law of slain pastor Philip Wise; Captain Roni Robbins; and Salvation Army Community Center secretary Shaveta McKay. The prayer came during the announcement of a $10,000 reward regarding Wise’s Christmas Eve slaying at the community center in North Little Rock.
Wiping their eyes after a prayer are (from left) Salvation Army Major Jim Bovender, the father-in-law of slain pastor Philip Wise; Captain Roni Robbins; and Salvation Army Community Center secretary Shaveta McKay. The prayer came during the announcement of a $10,000 reward regarding Wise’s Christmas Eve slaying at the community center in North Little Rock.

— Pastors, police and politicians begged and pleaded Monday for information about the unsolved Christmas Eve killing of a Salvation Army major in North Little Rock’s Baring Cross neighborhood.

“I’m asking the community to start snitching,” said the Rev. Benny Johnson, founder of the Little Rock-based group Stop the Violence, during an afternoon news conference at the Salvation Army Corps and Community Center at 1505 W. 18th St. where Philip Wise was shot just after 4 p.m. on Dec. 24.

The longer he spoke, the more earnest Johnson grew.

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“I’m pleading,” he said, “I’m really begging.”

Police Chief Danny Bradley added more.

“People within walking distance of where we are today” know who killed 40-year-old Wise, he said. He asked that the people who know the names of the two men, described as both black and wearing all black clothing, whom police hunted for a fifth day Monday in connection with the killing, be “strong enough to do their duty to friends and neighbors.”

Police have said the killers drifted into the nearby Windemere Hills housing projects after shooting Wise in front of his three children after a botched robbery. The killing was the 10th homicide investigated by North Little Rock police so far in 2009, department spokesman Sgt. Terry Kuykendall said. That number does not include three homicides ruled justified, he said.

Wise served in the Salvation Army for 15 years.

The reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the people responsible for killing Salvation Army Major Philip Wise has reached $10,000.

Reward in killing reaches $10,000

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The assembled officials announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the people who killed Wise.Terry Hartwick, executive director of the North Little Rock Chamber of Commerce, which opened the reward account, said tax-deductible donations poured into the reward fund from all over the country and that money keeps coming in.

Police said people with information may choose whether to leave their names or not. Anyone with information to pass along to investigators may call (501) 758-1234.

Officials also announced two more funds - one for Wise’s wife and children at Centennial Bank that is not tax-deductible and the other a tax-deductible fund through the Salvation Army to create a music camp in Wise’s name.

Major Harvey Johnson, the Salvation Army’s central Arkansas commander, said the funds could not be announced sooner because banks were closed for Christmas and then for the weekend. He said, too, that he had trouble finding a bank that would open a fund for Wise’s family.

“You’d think it would be easy but we had to go to about 10 banks before we found one that would do it,” he said.

Wise’s family is also eligible for certain benefits because he was working when he died, but officials couldnot provide specifics on Monday.

Bradley said investigators worked the case nonstop through the weekend.

“There’s no new information that I can give you today,” he said.

Asked whether race was a factor in the crime, police said they have not developed any information that the killing was motivated by anything but robbery.

The killers are “sad, sorry and don’t deserve to be in society,” Benny Johnson said.

Also at the news conference, the Rev. O.C. Jones of North Little Rock’s Mount Pleasant Baptist Church said the community needed to band together to purge the killers from its midst.

“I don’t feel we’ve done all we really can do,” he said.

The Rev. Reginald Henderson of Greater Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church in North Little Rock said the responsibility for solving a homicide did not belong just to community institutions such as the police.

“Not just the churches, either, but every household,” he said.

Mayor Patrick Hays alluded to other unsolved killings in Baring Cross, an isolated, depressed neighborhood east of Pike Avenue home to about one-tenth of the city’s 60,000 people.

“Success in this neighborhood will be achieved,” he said.

A memorial service for Wise is scheduled for 2 p.m. today at the First Assembly of God at 4501 Burrow Drive, North Little Rock.

A funeral service is also set for 11 a.m. Saturday at Spruce Street Presbyterian Church in Morgantown, W. Va.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/29/2009

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