Plea Makes Inmate Somebody Else’s Problem

FAYETTEVILLE — Cameron Garrett Jones is going back to prison for destroying an electrical outlet last year in the Washington County jail.

More significantly, the plea bargain Friday resolved all pending state charges and cleared the way for Jones to begin serving a stint in federal prison.

Jones, 31, has amassed some 57 pages worth of incident reports over the course of 371 days at the Washington County Detention Center while awaiting trial. Inmates are generally considered to be problematic if they collect two or three pages of incident reports.

“That’s somebody’s that’s a problem down there,” said David Bercaw, deputy prosecutor.

Jones, who has an extensive criminal history and is considered a habitual offender, is now technically in the custody of U.S. marshals because of a parole violation and revocation. Jones will be taken to a federal prison immediately to serve his two-year term.

Jones was sentenced Friday to 20 years at the Arkansas Department of Correction with 10 years suspended after pleading guilty to impairing the operations of a vital public facility. He was given credit for jail time served. Jones will be moved to state prison after he finishes the federal term.

“He’ll be a problem for the feds and then he can be a problem for the Department of Correction,” Bercaw said.

A charge involving having a “shank” found in Jones’ cell at the jail along with a list of other, unrelated, domestic abuse charges involving Jones’ children and wife, were dropped as part of the deal.

The federal probation violation is related to a 2006 case in which Jones was convicted in federal court of being a felon in possession of a firearm. He was sentenced in early 2007 to two years and three months in prison followed by three years of supervised probation.

The federal charge stemmed from an incident where Jones and Roy D. Jarvais assaulted Rahmat Hooshang Nazarali, the Crosses store owner and Madison County justice of the peace, after Nazarali stopped to help the men when their vehicle broke down.

Nazarali and his daughter told police one of the men punched him while the other yelled racial epithets.

The two fled in a minivan. Two shot guns were later found in the minivan.

Nazarali is of Middle Eastern descent and has owned the store and cafe beside Arkansas 16 at Crosses for a number of years.

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