Man dead after blaze, foot chase

A charred hot-dog cart sit outside the Bragg Street home of Ean Bordeaux after an altercation Friday between the hot-dog vendor and a former Little Rock police officer who died afterward. Video is available at arkansasonline.com/video
A charred hot-dog cart sit outside the Bragg Street home of Ean Bordeaux after an altercation Friday between the hot-dog vendor and a former Little Rock police officer who died afterward. Video is available at arkansasonline.com/video

A former Little Rock police officer died early Friday after a struggle in a yard belonging to a hot-dog vendor and blogger with whom the former officer had a “history,” police said.

Todd Payne, 50, was pronounced dead at a Little Rock hospital after officers found him lying outside the home of Ean Bordeaux, who said he had tackled the former officer only minutes before.

Little Rock Police Department officials said the Corruption Sucks Blog writer, whose age was unavailable, called 911 shortly after 4 a.m. to report that someone had tried setting one of his hot-dog carts on fire in his 1510 Bragg St. yard.

Police spokesman Lt. Sidney Allen said whoever doused the cart with an accelerant and lit it had run off, and Bordeaux was able to put out the fire himself.

The arsonist came back a second time, Allen said, and Bordeaux was waiting.

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“The suspect fled, and there was a short - a very short - foot chase, which ended when [Bordeaux] tackled him and [Payne]sustained his injuries,” Allen said.

First responders tried to perform life-saving techniques on Payne that were ultimately unsuccessful, Allen said. Payne’s body was sent to the state medical examiner’s office to determine the cause of death.

Allen added that officers did not observe any obvious external trauma that might have proved fatal.

Bordeaux was questioned and released without charges. Allen said investigators will eventually hand off their work to the prosecutor’s office to determine whether Bordeaux committed a crime.

Since detectives were unable to take a statement from Payne, Allen declined to speculate about the former officer’s motive for purportedly setting Bordeaux’s food cart on fire.

“Obviously from the blog, they had a history. But the exact role it played in this incident, I don’t know,” Allen said.

Bordeaux declined to comment about the events, saying he was still processing what had happened and that it was a traumatic experience for him and his family.

Bordeaux’s blog targets public corruption and oftentimes local police officers. Bordeaux knew Payne from selling hot dogs in the River Market area, where Payne was once assigned as an officer.

Payne joined the department in 1990 and was fired twice.

In September 2003, Payne showed up at the northwest patrol substation off Kanis Road and went inside to pick up his paycheck. Officers there said they noticed Payne was visibly intoxicated, and the officer later admitted to drinking inside his car in public view. The offense resulted in a 30-day suspension.

Five months later, North Little Rock officers found Payne’s truck slammed into a pole at the intersection of west and north Broadway.

He was “unsteady on his feet, [having] a disheveled appearance and blood shot eyes,” according to the police report. He was arrested, charged and ultimately convicted of driving while intoxicated.

In February 2005, he was fired for several department violations involving that crash. He won back his job through a Civil Service Commission appeal that May, in which his attorney noted that Payne was suffering from alcoholism and seeking treatment.

After another car crash, Payne left threatening and inappropriate voice mails with multiple insurance agents, going so far as to say he’d find them and “f*** them up” if they handled his claim incorrectly and was then suspended for 30 days in 2007, according to department findings.

In August 2010, Payne was fired again after an internal investigation showed Payne botched the handling of a fight call in the River Market area and stayed inside the police kiosk instead of trying to help.

At his October appeal, Payne said he was suffering from stomach cramps and diarrhea during the fight and that his involvement would have posed a greater risk than by having another officer help.

At the appeal hearing, Police Chief Stuart Thomas said the man’s actions were an embarrassment to the department: “I’m almost speechless when I reflect on the significance of the event.”

After a 26-minute deliberation, the commission voted to support Payne’s firing. He later lost an appeal in circuit court, and in July 2012, Payne’s law enforcement license was revoked by state authorities.

On March 1, Bordeaux posted on his blog about Payne again, alerting readers to his new job as a local security guard.

Arkansas, Pages 9 on 04/19/2014

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