A Boone County jury Thursday night acquitted the owner of the Scenic 7 Motel near Harrison of first-degree murder in the October 2011 shooting death of a young man he had taken in as his own to raise more than a decade earlier.
After the verdict, Bob Ray Eubanks, 74, embraced his attorney - longtime family lawyer Steve Davis, who said Friday that Eubanks’ was theonly murder case he’s ever handled in his 30-year career.
After a four-day trial, the Boone County Circuit Court jury went out for deliberations at 4:25 p.m. Thursday and returned with an innocent verdict at 7:10 p.m.
Jurors also considered two lesser-included offenses - second-degree murder and manslaughter - but acquitted Eubanks on all three counts, Davis said.
Eubanks contended heshot a drunken and enraged John Robert Eubanks, 26, in self-defense behind the Scenic 7 after the younger man threatened his life, charged him and slugged him in the abdomen.
Davis, who in the past handled civil cases for both of the Eubanks men, said John Eubanks was an alcoholic who had increasingly become a mean drunk.
“He was a nice kid when he was sober,” the former family attorney said.
“Bob was always the one who would calm John down,” Davis said, but on the night of Oct. 9, 2011.
John Eubanks was angry with his girlfriend about not being allowed to see his children, and took it out on the man who had been his protector since age 13, the attorney said.
Scenic 7 Motel, located just south of the Harrison city limits, really was a motel back in the days of the Dogpatch theme park, Davis said,but for many years has been an apartment complex that didn’t change its name.
Bob Eubanks bought the Scenic 7 in 1993 and has lived there with his wife since 1995.
Eubanks met John Robert Eubanks when he was a 13-year-old named John Lupe Gallegos III, Davis said.
Young Gallegos moved into the Scenic 7 with his biological grandparents, but it wasn’t long before Bob Eubanks came to know him andgained legal custody of him through the juvenile system.
“Bob called him his adopted son, but there was never an adoption,” Davis said. At some point John’s name was changed.
Though Bob Eubanks’ defense never centered on a mental-disease or defect claim, an issue arose in which he could remember firing only one shot at John Eubanks, even though thephysical evidence clearly indicated that John Eubanks was shot three times, Davis said.
Since the shooting, Bob Eubanks developed dissociative amnesia, Davis said, which is why he believes he fired only once. A Eureka Springs psychiatrist, Dr. Gerald Stein, testified about that during the trial.
Bob Eubanks, a retired major in the Green Berets who served during Vietnam and earned two Purple Hearts, three Bronze Stars and the Combat Infantry Badge, also suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, it was learned during the case, Davis said.
“This was the first time Bob had discharged a firearm since he retired out ofthe military in 1982,” his attorney said.
Boone County Circuit Clerk Jeannie Steen said she sat in on most of Eubanks’ trial. Like Davis, she remembered exactly when the jury went out and when it returned.
Steen, who is retiring Dec. 31, said it was a rare time when watching a trial that she came away believing the defendant was innocent.
That was based on Eubanks’ testimony, demeanor and credibility, but also on “a feeling I had,” she said, adding that she does not know Eubanks well.
Eubanks’ and Stein’s testimony were “what got to me most,” Steen said.
“Mr. Eubanks was just trying to calm him down and get him under control, and it just turned bad,” she said of the accused and the victim.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 12/22/2012