Motorcycle driver killed in accident
A Hot Springs man died Wednesday after he was thrown from his motorcycle, according to a preliminary Arkansas State Police fatality accident report.
Shortly before 9 p.m., William Peppard, 57, was riding north on Arkansas 7 in Garland County when he failed to negotiate a curve, state police said.
His 2002 Harley-Davidson motorcycle veered off the road and struck a parked Ford F150 pickup, state police said.
Peppard was thrown from the motorcycle and died from his injuries, state police said.
- ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTEMan to serve year after losing appeal
A judge in Faulkner County Circuit Court sentenced a Vilonia man to a year in the county jail on Wednesday over a 2011 incident in which two women said he approached them, commented on their feet and asked to suck their toes.
Michael Wyatt, 52, will spend a year in the Faulkner County jail, with three months suspended, after losing an appeal he filed in circuit court last year to avoid jail time, according to a news release from the Conway city attorney’s office. Prosecutors and Wyatt’s attorney negotiated the deal for two counts of misdemeanor harassment.
He was arrested in September 2011 after two women in separate Conway stores said he told them he wanted to suck their toes, the release said. In March 2012, he pleaded no contest to the charges, and a Conway District Court judge gave him a one-year suspended jail sentence on the condition he wouldn’t do it again.
Two months later, however, he was arrested and charged in Cabot District Court with harassment after he trailed a woman in a Kroger store and told her she had “pretty feet” that he wanted to “massage” and suck, the release said. After Wyatt’s arrest, Conway City Attorney Mike Murphy petitioned to impose the jail sentence, which was reinstated.
Wyatt then appealed the sentence in circuit court.
- ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
Trooper, LR man face drug charges
FBI agents arrested an Arkansas State Police lieutenant and a Little Rock man on drug charges Thursday, the federal agency’s spokesman said.
Sedrick Reed, 43, was being held at the Pulaski County jail after federal authorities arrested him at state police headquarters about 4:30 p.m. Thursday, said FBI spokesman Kimberly Brunell and Cherith Beck, spokesman for the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas. Lamont Johnson, 45, was also arrested Thursday at his home at 4406 Arehart Drive, records show.
The men were arrested on one charge of Prohibited Acts A, which criminalizes manufacturing, distributing, dispensing or possessing with intent to manufacture, distribute or dispense acontrolled substance or counterfeit substance. The charge carries different sentences depending on the kind and amount of drug involved.
No further information was released by the FBI or the U.S. attorney’s office.
Reed, who was fired shortly before 5 p.m.
Thursday, had served most of his nearly 18-year tenure with state police on patrol in Troop A, police spokesman Bill Sadler said.
The troop serves Faulkner, Lonoke, Pulaski and Saline counties.
Reed will be watched around the clock and won’t be allowed around other inmates, Pulaski County sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Carl Minden said.
- ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTEJudge bows out of gay-marriage case
A federal judge stepped aside Thursday from presiding over a lawsuit challenging Amendment 83, which bans same-sex unions in Arkansas.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in federal court in Little Rock and assigned randomly to U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes, contends that Amendment 83 and state law violate the right to equal protection and due process of law under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It seeks an injunction prohibiting any enforcement of the amendment and laws.
“I am recusing from this case because of longstanding, close personal and professional relationships with persons who were leaders in drafting and campaigning for Amendment 83,” Holmes said in an order filed late Thursday afternoon.
“These relationships were forged in the 1980s in campaigns regarding issues similar to, though not the same as, the issues surrounding Amendment 83,” Holmes wrote. “The professional aspect of these relationships ceased upon my appointment to this office, but the close personal relationships have continued.”
Holmes noted that the law requires a judge to disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.
The case was reassigned randomly to U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker.
- ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 10 on 07/20/2013