A 19-year-old Little Rock man has accepted a 10-year prison sentence for robbing a stranger to whom he had given a lift.
In exchange for Malik Dantrial Eady's guilty plea to robbery Monday, reduced from aggravated robbery, prosecutors dropped a felony theft charge and secured for the 19-year-old Eady an application to attend prison boot camp that could qualify him for early parole if he completes the program.
Otherwise, he will have to serve 2 1/2 years in prison before qualifying for release.
Eady was arrested in December, about five minutes after his former passenger, 25-year-old Phillip Mackintrush, reported to Little Rock police that he'd been robbed of his cellphone at gunpoint by a man driving a green Ford Taurus who had been giving Mackintrush a ride to his Franklin Street home, according to arrest reports.
The robber left Mackintrush in the 1000 block of South Battery Street, with police apprehending Eady in the 2800 block of South State Street, recovering Mackintrush's cellphone and finding a pistol, which had been reported stolen, in the vehicle.
During the course of the proceedings, authorities revealed that Eady has a juvenile conviction for rape.
Court records show Eady was arrested in June 2010 at age 15 while living in Jacksonville and charged as an adult, but the case was transferred at court order to juvenile court in April 2011.
His attorney said Jacksonville police had taken advantage of the developmentally disabled Eady, who had been diagnosed with mental retardation and had an IQ of 59.
At a hearing on the case, police said he confessed to having a 6-year-old neighbor girl perform oral sex on him in the apartments where they both lived in September 2010.
The girl told authorities Eady made her touch his "pocketbook," her word for genitals, during a game of hide and seek, according to testimony from that hearing.
Metro on 05/23/2014
