Weeks after skipping town to evade a murder warrant, the suspect in a 2013 Little Rock homicide was handed over to Little Rock detectives Wednesday after he surfaced in a Chicago emergency room after a street fight, according to federal investigators.

Cornelius Pittman, who has had several Little Rock and Chicago area addresses, was returned to Little Rock on Wednesday night and charged with capital murder nearly a year after the June 30 shooting of 39-year-old Lawrence Thomas.

The shooting followed an attempted robbery on West 12th Street, according to police, and left Thomas with several leg wounds.

Thomas did not die until a couple of weeks later and became Little Rock's 21st homicide victim of 2013.

Detectives identified Pittman, 25, as a suspect in Thomas' slaying on May 1 this year, but when they learned he had skipped town to his native Chicago, the case was relayed to the local branch of the U.S. Marshals Service.

Kevin Sanders, supervising deputy for the Little Rock office of the U.S. Marshals Service, said officers were investigating the case when they caught a lucky break.

"We knew he was in Chicago [but] didn't know exactly where," Sanders said. "Before we could get a lead sent up to Chicago, evidently he got into a fight. Chicago [police] picked him up."

Sanders said Pittman's "street fight" sent him to the hospital. It wasn't until after he was treated that Chicago officers checked his criminal record and discovered that a murder warrant had been issued for him in Arkansas.

Public affairs officials with the Chicago Police Department didn't know about the street fight and, after declining to release a case file or incident report, said Pittman was arrested May 31 after officers found him loitering in a known drug area.

Little Rock police officials did not know for certain how Pittman was transported back to Arkansas, but Sanders said Pittman was likely fetched by Little Rock detectives.

According to an affidavit filed by Little Rock homicide investigators when they requested the murder warrant, Pittman was tied to Thomas' slaying by DNA taken from a hat they found in the victim's car.

The night Thomas was shot, he flagged down patrol officers at 3:54 a.m. from his car at the Mapco station at 1201 S. Woodrow St. just as officers got a call about a shooting a few blocks away.

Thomas had multiple gunshot wounds in his right leg, according to officers, and he was taken for treatment to UAMS Medical Center in Little Rock.

The next day, he told detectives that he was flagged down by a man in the middle of West 12th Street near Peyton Street who asked him "if he wanted drugs or sex," affidavits said.

According to detectives, Thomas declined the man's offer and the suspect became "loud and violent" and told him to hand over his wallet and leave him the car.

Thomas refused, and the suspect pulled out a gun, and Thomas, "[knowing] he was about to get shot," began fighting with the suspect, the affidavit said.

The gunman fired off several rounds, striking Thomas' leg, but Thomas was able to knock the hat off his robber's head, which police later collected as evidence.

Thomas was treated and released from the hospital, but on July 15, he started having breathing problems and returned to UAMS Medical Center.

He died the next day, the result of complications from the June 30 gunshot wounds, according to state medical examiners.

Months later, an analysis found the DNA on the hat matched Pittman's DNA.

On May 1, detectives obtained a murder warrant, but federal officials said Pittman fled the state soon after the warrant was issued.

Pittman arrived in Little Rock several years ago for a "fresh start" after his release from prison in Illinois, according to court records, and he was subsequently named as a suspect, or arrested, in several violent crimes in Little Rock.

At the time of Thomas' shooting, Pittman was on probation after negotiated guilty pleas to violent crimes committed in Little Rock.

On May 4, 2011, officers went to a disturbance on Elam Street where they encountered Pittman, who refused to comply with officers' orders and resisted arrest, according to reports.

An officer struck Pittman in the leg with a baton, according to police reports, and Pittman then punched the officer in the head, leaving the officer with a knot above his left eye and a broken pair of sunglasses.

In November 2011, he negotiated a guilty plea to the charges stemming from the altercation with the officer and was placed on probation for a year.

On April 18, 2012, only five months into that probation, Pittman led officers on a vehicle pursuit through midtown, crashed his car into a pair of trash cans and then fled on foot.

The chase started as a traffic stop, when police reportedly realized that the vehicle driven by Pittman matched the description of a vehicle used in the kidnapping of a deli employee earlier that night. The vehicle was also used to drive the employee to several ATMs to make cash withdrawals, according to reports.

Pittman, who worked for U.S. Pizza at the time, was charged with aggravated robbery, kidnapping and several other crimes.

The robbery and kidnapping charges against Pittman and another suspect, Jerard Ball, were nolle prossed, a legal action in which the prosecutor chooses not to proceed with a case. Pittman then negotiated a guilty plea to fleeing and to a misdemeanor drug possession count involving over 2 grams of marijuana that officers found on him when he was arrested.

He was sentenced to five years of probation, ordered to pay a $1,000 fine and required to submit a DNA sample.

After his initial appearance Thursday in Little Rock District Court, Pittman was remanded to the Pulaski County jail and was ordered to be held without bond.

Suspect

Pittman was identified as the aggressor in several battery reports over the past several years, including an attack on a Little Rock officer.

Metro on 06/20/2014